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mynightingalecomplex · 4 years ago

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Laramie Injury List

After years of wishing this existed, I am thrilled to finally present to you

*drum roll*

The ONLY definitive....

Laramie Injury List

Season 1:

E1 – Stage Stop

Slim – held at gunpoint, hit with rifle butt, punched repeatedly, knocked unconscious twice

Jess – held at gunpoint, punched

E2 – Glory Road

Jess – Worried, intimidated, beaten with brass knuckles

E3 – Circle of Fire

Slim – Punched and knocked to the ground

E4 – Fugitive Road

Jess – Falls off cliff, nearly drowns

Slim – Arm cut with knife, roughly bandaged

E5 – The Star Trail

E6 – The Lawbreakers

Jess – Forced to get drunk, pretend fight, held at gunpoint, tied up

E7 – The Iron Captain

Slim – Taken hostage, hand beaten with pistol butt, fist-fight

Jess – Taken hostage, beaten while tied up

E8 – General Delivery

Ed Calder – Stepped in cougar trap

E9 – The Run to Tucumvaca

Jess – Shot in shoulder, falls off horse, bandaged

E10 – The General Must Die

Slim – Hangover

Jess – Thrown from horse, injured arm

E11 – Dark Verdict

Slim – Beaten up, self-treatment head injury, weak and dizzy

Jess – Loses friend, sad and angry

E12 – Man of God

E13 – Bare Knuckles

Slim – Rigged fist-fight, blinded and beaten up

E14 – The Lonesome Gun

E15 – Night of the Quiet Men

Jess – Shot in the back of shoulder, found alone on ground

E16 – The Pass

Slim - Falls down cliff and knocked unconscious, shot in left shoulder, knocked down/unconscious by avalanche (brief) *added by @arlothia

E17 – Trail Drive

Slim - Arm grazed by bullet, fist fight *added by @arlothia

E18 – Day of Vengeance

Slim - shot in left shoulder, knocked off horse, unconscious, arm held in vest as sling

Jess - Held at gunpoint *added by @arlothia

E19 – The Legend of Lily

Jess – Fist fight

E20 – Death Wind

Slim – Held at gunpoint, fist-fight

Jess – Hit with a falling door

E21 – Company Man

E22 – Rope of Steel

Slim – Falls off horse, fist fight

E23 – Duel at Alta Mesa

Jess - shot at, fell off horse. Restrained, punched, bloody lip, struggle, thrown to ground. Gets in fight. *added by @arlothia

E24 – Street of Hate

Slim – Fist fight

Jess – Fist fight

E25 – Ride or Die

Slim – exhausted, lack of sleep, fist fight

E26 – Hour After Dawn

E27 – The Protectors

Jess – Ambushed, head injury, bandaged, helped to walk

E28 – Saddle and Spur

Slim – Fist fight

Jess – Fist fight

E29 – Midnight Rebellion

Jess – Sucker punched, put in brig

E30 – Cemetery Road

Jonsey – Dragged by mule team, injured shoulder

E31 – Men of Defiance

Jess- Shot, ribs bandaged, arm in sling

Reb – Captured, beaten, tied to tree in desert sun, helped to walk

SEASON 2

E01 – Queen of Diamonds

Jess – Beaten up

E02 – The Track of the Jackal

E03 – Three Rode West

E04 – Ride the Wild Wind

E05 – The Long Riders

Jess – Fist Fight, knocked out, tied up

E06 – The Dark Trail

E07 - .45 Calibre

E08 – License to Kill

Jess – Held at gun point, shackled to tree, exhausted, wrists rubbed raw

E09 – Drifter’s Gold

Slim – Fist fight (multiple!), manhandled, held at gunpoint

E10 – No Second Chance

Slim – Ambushed, knocked out, fist fight

Jess - Ambushed, knocked out

E11 – Duel at Parkinson Town

Slim – Shot left shoulder, shot left flank, collapses, walking with cane

E12 – A Sound of Bells

E13 – The Passing of Kuba Smith

E14 – Man from Kansas

Jess – Ambushed, fist fight

E15 – Killer Without a Cause

Slim – Beaten up, bleeding lip

E16 – Stolen Tribute

Jess – Held hostage, tied up, gagged, fist fight, holding ribs, punched, falls off horse, knocked unconscious, pistol whipped, holding head

E17 – The Lost Dutchman

Jess – Shot at, knocked off horse, pistol whipped, drugged, shot in the arm

E18 – Cactucs Lady

Jess – Fist fight

E19 – Riders of the Night

Slim – Fist fight, shot in left arm, wearing sling

E20 – Mark of the Manhunters

Jim Craig – Broken ribs, bandaged

Slim – Fist fight

E21 – Rimrock

Slim – Shot

Jess – Fist fight, pistol whipped, wrongly imprisoned

E22 – Run of the Hunted

Slim – ambushed, knocked out, holding head, fist fight

E23 – Two for the Gallows

Slim – Held at gun point, pistol whipped, pushed over cliff, broken arm

E24 – The Debt

Jess – Ambushed, tied up

E25 – Killers’ Odds

Jess – Hung over, knocked out, carried, holding head

E26 – Bitter Glory

Jess – Shot in the back, knocked off horse, bandaged. Exhausted, fainting, fist fight, knocked out. Tied up, wincing

E27 – The Tumbleweed Wagon

Slim – Kidnapped, beaten up, knocked out, another fist fight, shackled to moving wagon,

E28 – Trigger Point

Jess – Shot in the arm, arm bandaged, weak, dehydrated

E29 – Badge of the Outsider

Slim – Two fist fights

E30 – Men in Shadows

Jess – Punched, bloody lip,

E31 – Strange Company

E32 – Window in White

Slim – Lassoed, dragged, sore, fist fight

E33 – Ride into Darkness

Jess – Fist fight, bloody lip, pistol whipped, unconscious, left in burning house, jumps through window. Cared for, wincing, holding head

Season 3

E1 – Dragon at the Door

Jess -Fist fights (multiple)

E2 – Ladies’ Day

Jess – Fist fight,

E3 – Siege at Jubilee

Jess – Toothache, thrown from stagecoach,

E4 – The Mountain Men

Slim – Fist fight, forehead creased with bullet

Jess – Jabbed with rifle, fist fight

E5 – The Fatal Step

Slim – Shot left shoulder, arm in sling

Jess – Thrown from stagecoach, trapped in abandoned mine

E6 – The Last Journey

Slim – Fist fight

E7 – Deadly is the Night

E8 – The Accusers

Jess – Knife fight, fist fight

Red Wolf – Wounded leg, fever, exhausted,

E9 – Wolf Cub

E10 – Handful of Fire

Slim – Manhandled, shot in shoulder

E11 – The Killer Legend

Tom Wade – Beaten up, shot left arm

E12 – The Jailbreakers

Slim – Beaten up, knocked out, holding head.

E13 – The Lawless Seven

Jess – Shot left arm, exhausted, collapse. Fist fight, hand-cuffed. Shot in the leg, held in prison.

E14 – The Perfect Gift

Slim – Fist fight, shot right shoulder

E15 – The Barefoot Kid

E16 – Shadows in the Dust

Slim – Shot left shoulder, infected, fever, dizzy, collapse (Full episode)

E17 – The Runaway

E18 – The Confederate Express

Jess – Ambushed, beaten up, helped to walk. Drugged, weak, difficulty talking

Slim – Shot left shoulder, bandaged

E19 – The High Country

Slim – fist fight (multiple)

E20 – A Grave for Cully Brown

Jess – Head grazed by bullet, unconscious, probable concussion, head bandaged. Dizzy, weak, collapse, holding head.

E21 – The Runt

E22 – The Dynamiters

E23 – Day of the Savage

E24 – Justice in a Hurry

Slim – Bushwhacked, falls off horse

E25 – The Replacement

E26 – The Turn of the Wheel

Slim – manhandled, cut with knife

E27 – Trial by Fire

Jess – fist fight, shot left arm, treated, arm in sling

E28 – Fall into Darkness

Slim – trapped in abandoned well shaft

Season 4

E1 – Among the Missing

Jess – Hit in the head with a shotgun, unconscious, bleeding. Dizzy, disoriented, weak. Full episode.

E2 – War Hero

E3 – The Fortune Hunter

E4 – Shadow of the Past

Jess – Ambushed, beaten up

E5 – The Long Road Back

E6 – Lost Allegiance

Jess – Crushed by falling tree, pinned, broken ribs. Falls off horse, cared for. Bandaged ribs, beaten up (Full episode)

E7 – The Sunday Shoot

E8 – Double Eagles

E9 – Beyond Justice

E10 – Bad Blood

Jess – Manhandled

E11 – Time of the Traitor

Steve – crushed by wagon, arm amputated

Slim – Fist fight, cut on arm

E12 – Gun Duel

Jess – fist fight, dazed, holding head

E13 – Naked Steel

Slim – Fist fight

E14 – Vengeance

Slim – Falls off cliff, dislocates shoulder

Jess – fist fight,

E15 – Protective Custody

Slim – held at gunpoint, manhandled, punched in the stomach, fist fight

E16 – The Betrayers

Jess – fist fight, trapped in burning building

E17 – The Wedding Party

E18 – No Place to Run

Jess – Twisted knee, limping, fist fight, cut hand with saw

E19 – The Fugitives

Slim – Shot, left for dead in blizzard, carried, surgery on kitchen table.

Jess – Fist fight,

E20 – The Dispossessed

Jess – Jabbed in stomach with rifle, pistol whipped, wincing, holding head

E21 – The Renegade Brand

Jess – Shot left thigh, bandaged

Slim – fist fight (several), manhandled

E22 – The Violent Ones

Jess – Fist fight, bullet grazed arm, emotional, worried

Slim – Ambushed, beaten up, broken ribs, weak, holding side

E23 – The Unvanquished

Slim – fist fight (multiple)

E24 – The Sometime Gambler

E25 – Edge of Evil

Jess – fist fight, head injury, held at gunpoint

E26 – Broken Honor

Jess – Forearm grazed with bullet,

E27 – The Last Battleground

E28 – The Stranger

Jess – Falls from cliff, rescued, broken leg. Tries to escape, wincing, Wrestled with, helped to walk. Fireman’s carry, fever, difficulty walking.

E29 – The Marshals

Jess – Shot in chest, weak, fever (Full episode)

E30 – Badge of Glory

Jess – fist fight, pistol whipped, holding head

E31 – Trapped

Slim – tied up, knocked out, fist fight

E32 – The Road to Helena

Slim – Thrown from horse, knocked out, fist fight (multiple)

This is now the complete Laramie Injury list. If I missed any, please let me know! I hope you enjoy Laramie as much as I have.

If you are interested in watching Laramie, please check out this link:

https://archive.org/details/@randy_bragg

#laramie #western #classic tv #classic whump #injury list #whump list #laramie injury list #jess harper #robert fuller #slim sherman #john smith actor

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wildernessuntothemselves · 3 years ago

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Devil on Your Team | Part 1

Word Count: 1.9k

Genre: angst, smut

A\N: Asgard AU where Felix is Loki, Chan is Thor, and OC/reader is Lady Sif

Gif credit @915archive

“Will you join us this time, brother?”

Loki hesitates at Thor’s question. He was never good at the sort of thing that his friends enjoyed so, which made him a target for ridicule across the realm. What kind of man, a prince nonetheless, was so weak and fearful? Not a real man, that’s what.

Thor didn’t make it easier for him. Being the picture of the formidable, valiant warrior, he made Felix’s shortcomings all the more stark. Loki was all too aware of the comparisons people liked to make between them--they would fawn over how Thor was so brave, so strong, so much like the king that his frail little brother could never be. They would laugh and thank their stars that the fates were kind enough to have Thor be the old king’s first born and not his pitiful little brother.

Even Thor, who claimed to love him most in the world, was embarrassed of him. He always tried to egg him on and make him engage in “manlier” endeavors and forsake his witchcraft, forcing him along on his reckless adventures with his gang of hooligans so he would toughen up. How can he say that he loves him when he saw him as something that needed to be fixed? Thor didn’t love him. He pitied him.

Only you gazed upon him and accepted him for who he was. You knew too well what it felt like to be underestimated and ridiculed for being different, for daring to not adhere to their millenia-old customs of what makes one a good warrior or a proper lady. Every time he would hide and cry, you would find him and remind him that underestimating him will be their downfall, that true weakness is stupidity and arrogance and they had that in excess.

And there you were, coming to his defense once more.

“Shut up, you big oaf. Loki doesn’t care for our silly games.”

“Why not? All he has to do is sit back and not get in the way of our fair maiden and he should be fine.” Volstagg cuts in, followed by a series of chuckles that ebb and flow through the group.

“Volstagg.” Thor warns, shooting him a glare that quiets the snickering down, but by then it was too late, the damage had been done.

For, worse than the comparisons between himself and his golden brother, were those between him and the woman he loved so dearly.

Your close relationship made it so it was easy for people to jeer at the fact that the warrior lady is doing a man’s job while the prince practised such cowardly arts as magic that were meant for women. The comparison wasn’t flattering to either of you as he was thought of as a weakling and you as a woman trying to be a man.

“No, Volstagg, go on. Tell me what exactly you mean to say.” Again, you start defending him, ready to start a fight with the large man who began slinking back when faced with your unbridled fury. You were always so passionate about defending him, but Loki cannot let you keep doing that. He needed to prove that he could look after himself, not to impress those mindless thugs, but to prove to you that he could be a man for you, and provide you with protection just like any other man.

“I’m sure he’s just joking, my lady.” Loki interrupts and you look at him with surprised eyes that get all the wider as he continues, “It doesn’t matter anyway as I��ll be joining you.”

“My prince, you don’t have to--”

“I don’t have to do anything, my lady. I want to. Now let’s stop this useless bickering and go.”

__________________________

There was a nervous energy within the group the whole time they were in Alfheim. The men felt weird with Loki there and Loki felt weird with the warrior lady always hovering around.

“Lady, if I didn’t know any better I’d think that you were trying to guard me. I don’t need guarding. I can defend myself.” He didn’t want to snap at you like that but he desired so desperately for you to see him as a man for once.

“O-of course, my prince.” You splutter, a pretty blush on your face from being called out, and hesitantly take a few steps away from him, still not going far.

Loki huffs and charges forward carelessly, if you weren’t going to give him space, he will take it himself. And it’s precisely his attempt to distance himself from you that gets them in trouble.

“Brother, look out!” Thor shouts and Loki looks up barely in time to see an elf descend on him from the tree he was under. Shouts rise up and fill the air as their party gets ambushed by the rogue elves they were after.

Loki gets outnumbered, one of the elves delivering a blow to him before you can make your way to him. But your party quickly overcomes their momentary shock and works fast to push back the elves, steadily gaining control and shifting the tides in your favor. Eventually, you beat the band of rogue elves and send them scattering back into the woods.

When the fight dies down, things only get worse for Loki as you rush to cradle his body in your arms, thinking he is unconscious, before turning back to the men. “Shame on you! If you hadn’t been absolute pricks to him, he wouldn’t have felt the need to prove himself to you and get himself hurt. Why must you be like this?”

“I’m sorry, my lady.” Thor speaks up, sounding genuinely upset too.

“Oh, shove it up your big behind, my prince.” You growl, lifting Loki up in your arms and moving towards the portal to go back home.

Even without opening his eyes, he can feel your worried gaze on his face and it kills him.

__________________

Loki became closed off the entire period he was healing. The more you fussed over him, the quieter he got. He was so disappointed in himself and you taking care of him only wounded his ego further.

“Stop babying me, woman. You’re worse than the lot of them. Would you like me to hand you a pair of scissors so you can snip my balls off and hang them around your neck?”

You were taken aback by his outburst, and Loki regrets his outburst for a second, thinking he’s finally pushed you away. But instead of stomping off, you get on the bed and straddle him, grabbing his neck and growling roughly, “You don’t want me to be gentle with you? Fine, I won’t be gentle.”

You smash her lips to his, tearing a noise of surprise from his throat. You’d been patient enough with him but he insists on being a brat. If that’s the way he wants to be treated then so be it. And judging by the way he kissed you back eagerly, you don’t have to wonder long.

He was almost healed by now, and you could be free to run her hands all over him without hurting him, eliciting instead the most needy moans from his pretty lips. But when he tries to do the same, he is met with hard, unyielding steel.

"This is unfair. Take this off." He protests against your lips.

"I think not. You have been quite the sourpuss lately, I don't think you deserve to touch me. Matter of fact, keep those wandering hands up." You grab his hands and pin them to the bed, intending to punish him for all the hell he made you go through.

"No, please, my lady, let me touch you."

"Oh you're already begging, that's not very manly of you." You bite at him, still upset that he endangered his life just because his ego was bruised.

He cowers under your intense glare, feeling reprimanded. "I'm sorry, I'll be good."

"Oh you will be. Now quit your protesting or I'll gag you too."

He shuts up, though he's unsure if it wouldn't have been better for you to gag him as the noises that come out of his throat at your ministrations were not very dignified.

"You don't know how long I've been waiting to get my hands on you, my prince. You drive me crazy." You drawl, palming his member and making him turn to hide his face in his arm as a blush covers his face.

"I should punish you for teasing me so." You slowly pull his trousers down his hips, exposing his eager member to the cool night air that was clashing with your warm breath so close to where he needed you the most. "Will you be good for me from now on, my sweet prince?"

This was everything they ridiculed him for, being so subservient to a woman like this, but damn did he crave it. He needed you to own him.

"Yes, my lady." He stares down at you as you lean down ever so close to his cock, your breath fanning over him, as hot as ever and he feels his skin melt under it. The heat spreading to the rest of his body made his blood simmer in his veins. Sweat beaded up on his skin and his mind sweltered as you put your mouth on him, but he could do nothing but push himself into the scorching heat of you, submitting himself to the flames.

But all too suddenly, he stops burning, coolness flashing over his body like one of his brother's storms, and he stares down at you in betrayal, ready to apologize for everything and profess his undying love for you if only she would put your mouth back on him, but the horror struck look on your face sobers him up.

"My lady, what is--"

"What is happening to you?" You shriek, and for the first time he sees fear in your eyes.

"What do you mean?" He puzzles, looking down at himself in reflex, wondering what had possessed you when a flash of blue catches his eyes…

Huge patches of his body were covered by rough blue skin, the likes of which are all too familiar to him. He can't help his own shout of panic. "What is that? What is happening?!"

"You're turning into a….a monster." You shake her head, tears springing to your eyes at the horror unfolding in front of you.

"Lady, help me please.” Loki is even more shaken, tears already streaming down his face as he seems terrified of his own self. “Did they put a curse on me?"

"I-I don't know." You lament, feeling hopeless.

But then an idea pops into your head, "I'll get the king. He'll know what to do."

"No, please!" His hands fly out to hold onto you but you jump back, and Loki quickly pulls his arms back to his body, wounded at the disgusted look on your face.

"Why not?"

"You know he doesn't favor me."

"Don't be ridiculous. He's your father." You try to calm him down but he only gets more disconsolate. "No you don't understand. You don't see the way he looks at him when no one is looking. I'm… I'm scared."

Your heart breaks at the way he shivers, but there is nothing else you can do. You’re sure he’s just panicked. Odin is good and kind and you trust him beyond measure. "You're hallucinating, my sweet. The king would never hurt you."

"No, you don't understand--" He squeaks, and you reach out to cradle his face in your palms, only flinching slightly at the coldness. "Hush, my sweet." You kiss him gently then run to the king. Hearing Loki sob behind you only makes you run faster.

_________________________

A/N: lol surprise

#stray kids smut #felix smut #stray kids angst #felix angst

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klstheword · 3 years ago

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I’m Your Man

PRESS QUOTES

“Immensely enjoyable, intriguing and complex.”“The film has an arthouse breakout potential, which might rival that of the similarly female-led German comedy Toni Erdman.”“Astute casting, of which the German-fluent Stevens is a stand out, will be a key selling point.” Screen International “Maria Schrader makes a witty, thought-provoking return to features in this fusion of science fiction and modern romance.”“Schrader's beguiling Berlinale competition entry could cultivate a substantial audience in international art houses — abetted by the rising profile of its helmer -fresh from her Emmy win for Netflix's 'Unorthodox' - and the canny casting of British heartthrob Dan Stevens as a boyfriend entirely too good to be human.”“Stevens is a wry revelation, progressing from rigid, unworldly physical comedy to near-living, breathing emotional turmoil, programmed or otherwise.”"Eggert's flinty firmness and Stevens' buttery elegance prove ideally mismatched from the off �� their performances gradually compromise and meet in the middle, borrowing a little of each other's suaveness and steel along the way." Variety “There's no doubt about it, it's all in the eyes: an ice-blue stare, locked on you, promising satisfaction and loyalty without asking for anything in return. That's what love is, and Dan Stevens is the humanoid robot here to give it to us.”“German actress Maria Schrader returns to directing for her third feature, undoubtedly her most well-rounded, exciting work yet.”“The script, co-written by Jan Schomburg, is what catapults I'm Your Man beyond comparison, into something diamond-sharp – witty, hopeful, wry, sincere, and sly all at once.”“Schrader's thoughtful romantic study digs into mundane neuroses and existential fears with wisdom, and empathy, making sure to keep you guessing long after Alma and Tom have stopped gazing into each other's eyes. Romantic yet level-headed, charming but always clear-eyed.” The Playlist “When the odd couple begins to cohabit, the robot is a catalyst for self-reflection and self-doubt in this comedy-drama that's as thought-provoking as it is funny.”“Schrader draws sharp character comedy out of the premise, aided by terrific performances.” “British actor Dan Stevens — speaking fluent German with an English accent — is a consistently amusing physical performer, while Toni Erdmann star Sandra Hüller puts in an enjoyable turn as his handler. But Eggert is the star of this show. She communicates Alma's exasperation, frustration and soul-searching in a way that delicately balances comedy and drama.”“The female lead gives the story more than just a fresh spin. It's a chance to ponder on the psychology of attraction from the perspective of a professional woman with a complex interior life, free from the testosterone that drives many examples in the genre. And in an age of isolation, social media and online dating, I'm Your Man seems startlingly relevant.” Deadline “Dan Stevens is a soulful robot in winsome romance from ‘Unorthodox' director.”“Eggert, whose stern, tired expression eventually gives way to the deep sorrow beneath the surface, grounds the character's transition into credible emotion.”“The movie's thematic trajectory crystallizes in a bittersweet third act, as a series of poetic moments draw the story back to the roots of Alma's struggles, and suggest that no perfect code can solve her problems when the best antidote is her own ability to talk them through.” IndieWire “A gorgeous romantic comedy that explores ever deeper questions as the plot progresses.” Blickpunkt Film “Delightful.”“Tom is perfectly cast, as Stevens narrowly borders on the threshold of uncanny valley with perfect timing and body language. His stilted posture, swift movements, and uncomfortable stares also add a level of subtle connotation to the illusion of artificial intelligence.”“I'm Your Man is an energetic recount on the cycles of modern love.” Filmhounds “Dan Stevens is as perfect as can be in the role. Not only is his German perfect, but so are his mannerisms, his quirky robot tics, and his inability to act and feel human. It's not an over-the-top comedic performance, but Dan Stevens brings just the right amount of subtle "I am a robot" humor to the role that it made me burst out laughing multiple times.”“It's a light and easily enjoyable film to watch, with a lovely piano-based score and gorgeous shots of Berlin.”“Directed by Maria Schrader, I'm Your Man is a charming, entertaining sci-fi romance with superb performances and a smart story about the grand complexity of love.” First Showing *****“Slick, sophisticated and satisfying this dating movie with a difference sees things from a distinctly female perspective exploring love and desire in a scenario may remind you of another recent German comedy Toni Erdmann which also starred Sandra Huller as a put-upon professional.” “Maria Schrader directs with supreme confidence adapting her script from a book by Emma Braslavsky, and adding a suggestive cinematic spin to her intuitive grasp of the subtle dynamics of love and dating, and the chemistry behind acting, in a film that reflects the reality that love relies just as much on the lows as the highs to be emotionally fulfilling for the human psyche.”“Maren Eggert is superb as the thinking woman's love interest in a performance that is fraught with emotion as well as thoughtful dignity, never resorting to histrionics or melodrama.”“Benedict Neuenfels makes this a pleasure to look at with his lush summery landscapes of Germany and Denmark.”“But the film belongs to Dan Stevens who gives a nuanced performance in a difficult role as a robot that teeters between the ideal emotionally intelligent man and a geeky robotic guy you may even and have dated yourself and eventually grown to love – and even fancy – for his truly masculine take on life.” Filmuforia "Maren Eggert inhabits Alma in a way that's so persuasive and naturalistic it barely feels like a performance at all." The Hollywood Reporter "With the energy of a studio era leading lady from the 1940s or 1980s, Eggert effortlessly succeeds and invigorates as an intelligent woman who also exudes an intoxicating confidence." IONCINEMA "Eggert plays her with a brusque, self-possessed wit that may remind some viewers of Greta Gerwig…" "Sensationally funny and gently science-fictional the film's embrace of uncertainty calls to mind Toni Erdmann." The Telegraph, UK "Eggert plays this tug of war with compelling subtlety, leading with her apprehension but flowering emotionally in brief glimpses of unfamiliar joy, too." "It's in the tiny glances that catch you off guard, the rush of adrenaline and pleasure that you thought only belonged in fairytales that suddenly color your world a little bit warmer and the script catapults “I'm Your Man” beyond comparison, into something diamond-sharp – witty, hopeful, wry, sincere, and sly all at once." The Playlist "A beautifully different, breezy yet poignant love story that is nevertheless full of deep truths." Berliner Morgenpost "Like a successful flirtation, no scene, no gesture is without meaning, and there is always something to laugh about." Süddeutsche Zeitung "It is a mind game that tells of the all too human with wit and charm. Ingeniously, this film questions our very real relationship patterns, holds up a mirror to us humans. An artifice that turns the tables for once and turns the man into an object, completely attuned to female needs." Heute journal "An abysmally funny commentary on contemporary life in the midst of algorithms." taz "The fine dialogue and the great ensemble should fulfil the dreams of 74 percent of all cinema-goers." Spiegel Online "Eggert grounds the character's transition into credible emotion." IndieWire

#I'm your man #Dan Stevens #Maran Eggert

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whumpinggrounds · 4 years ago

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Grief - SOW

second piece for @summer-of-whump! wrote this out so so fast but i really wanted to get it down. but my apologies for any errors and possibly not being my best writing. this was my original idea that turned into the piece for yesterday and today! so. let me know what you think :)

tagging @shapeshiftersandfire and @killtheprotagonist

CW: lady whump, pet whump, caretaker turned whumper, intimate whumper, angst, migraines, grief, aftermath of conditioning, angst

The day after she discovers the paper that says Handler Collins can fix her in any way he sees fit, Isabella finds herself sitting in the desk chair again. It would be safer to kneel on the floor, or stand next to the desk, but the high hysteria in her chest makes her knees weak. It makes her bold, and maybe a little stupid. Right now, it’s hard for Isabella to know the difference.

This time when she sits in the chair, it takes one deep breath before her hand is on the desk drawer. She doesn’t know what’s driving her – a need to check or confirm or just a morbid curiosity that verges on self-harm. Whatever it is, it helps Isabella slide the drawer open with no problem. Distantly, she watches as her fingers drift over the tabs, toward the one labeled with her name. Isabella’s gearing herself up to slide it out when something stops her in her tracks.

Just a few folders back, in the J section, there’s a folder labeled with another name. An old name. A name that drives a familiar spike of pain, like a forgotten friend, deep into the spot behind Isabella’s left eye.

As if entranced, Isabella lets the folder fall from between her fingers. She reaches for the new folder quickly, snatches it hungrily out of the drawer as if someone might be coming to stop her. There’s a sense of danger in the room, a tension so heavy Isabella catches herself looking over her shoulder. This is something. This could be everything.

Isabella’s shaking fingers let the folder drop onto the desk. She’s long used to hearing the name. Miss Mara broke her of that aversion the first few weeks, back when she refused to accept the girl she’d known was gone.

Now, though, things are different. Now, things have changed. Somewhere along the way, the girl Miss Mara knew had started to come back. Had started to make her presence known in the back of Isabella’s head. This time, though, Miss Mara wasn’t pleased. When Isabella starts asking questions, Miss Mara scowls, shakes her head, smacks Isabella if she won’t shut up. The remembering, the dreams, the vague impressions from clothes and smells – Isabella keeps them secret, keeps them close, strives vainly to understand what exactly they are.

The folder might be an answer, might be the thread that makes it all hang together. Blinking past the dizziness pressing in her head, Isabella opens the folder.

Inside: photos. Letters written in an unknown hand. A friendship bracelet, long since cut off someone’s wrist. A silver necklace with a shiny little charm shaped like a star. Head aching, eyes on fire, Isabella pages through it all, stopping every now and then to examine a line here, a face in a photo there.

If she keeps her eyes unfocused, Isabella can look for just a few minutes through her headache. She still has to close her eyes, recuperate, steel herself before she continues, but she can process just a little here and there. The items in the folder – the folder –

There are photos of her and Miss Mara. They’re smiling in the photos, standing side by side. Her – Isabella’s – Jude’s arms, they’re wrapped around her owner. Her girlfriend. Her friend?

Whoever Miss Mara was to her, they look happy. Jude, Isabella, whoever it is…she looks happy.

Blinking back sudden tears, Isabella looks away from the photos. There are so many of them. Strips from photobooths where they’re making goofy faces, selfies in front of pretty views, staged photos where they’re standing side by side, grinning for someone anonymous beside the camera. It’s the two of them, over and over – hardly anyone else along with them, and in those rare photos where there’s someone else, they don’t appear more than the once. Isabella seizes on these faces, stares desperately at these faces, wanting badly to glean something from these strangers, and yet finds nothing. With an intensity approaching desperation, Isabella turns to the papers without images, the ones with writing.

Dear Mara, I read this and thought of you…

Dear Mara, Happy birthday!

Mar – Going to be late today, I have a group project meeting…

Mara, Mara-Mara, Mar

Isabella’s eyes are so full of tears they’re useless. She can’t read a word through the blur. There are few enough notes, but Miss Mara seems to have saved them all – post it notes to birthday cards to a printout of a poem with too-familiar handwriting tagged on in the corner. That handwriting. It isn’t Miss Mara’s. Isabella thinks, with a deeply sick feeling, that it must be hers.

Back to the photos, almost frantically now. Isabella pages through them, looking for answers, looking for clues, looking for anything besides the idiotic carefree face of that stupid naïve girl. It’s the last picture, the final photo in the stack that finally does it.

This is the only photo with many faces – a dozen or more, all lines up and grinning. Some look nervous; other have their chins jutting out defiantly. In the center of them is a poster, clearly homemade – maybe painted on a bedsheet? It’s in black, all caps. It says Liberation.

In the top right corner, there’s a row of familiar faces. All in a line – Jude, and then Miss Mara, and then, flame-haired and nervous-smiling, Jamie.

Isabella feels like she can’t breathe. She flips the photo over to get away from the faces and there’s writing there in a familiar, messy hand.

First pet lib meeting with Mara.

Below that, in a different color pen, written even more sloppily –

And Jamie.

Jamie’s name is underlined, twice.

Isabella’s breath comes shorter and shorter. She sets the photo on top of the stack and stares at it – Jamie’s smiling face, Miss Mara’s smiling face, their arms around each other. Miss Mara’s arms around Isabella. Her smiling face.

Not hers. Pushing the chair back from the desk, Isabella puts her head between her knees and tries to breathe. It’s not hers. It’s just not her anymore. The girl in the photo, the smiling girl, the normal happy human person in those pictures isn’t her, is someone else. That young woman is dead and gone, and Isabella is someone else. She needs to – she needs to look at that face as a stranger, a missing person, someone who doesn’t, shouldn’t, can’t matter anymore.

Instead, Isabella traces a finger gently down the curve of her stupid, sweet, smiling face. Her little smirk when Miss Mara’s kissing her on the cheek. The wide-eyed joy as they beam from the top of a mountain. Her clear-eyed commitment to such a terrifyingly fruitless cause. This young woman, this kid, her complete and unearned confident happiness. Isabella can see, so clearly it aches, that nothing truly bad had ever really happened to her. That she probably believed that nothing truly bad would ever happen to her. It makes Isabella’s chest hurt. It makes her eyes burn with yet more filling tears.

That girl is gone, she tells herself firmly, biting down on the tremble in her lip. That girl is gone. She closes the folder fast, lays a hand on top of it as if she can hold it down, away from her.

Then, crumbling, cracking, breaking all at once, Isabella scoops the folder up and holds it to her chest. Moving low and fast, like a wounded animal, she scrambles from the chair, lets it roll away behind her, and she runs to the closet. There, on the floor, in the dark corner where she hides herself, Isabella holds the folder to her chest and weeps.

That girl isn’t gone. She’s dead and wrong and broken but she’s not gone, she’s here, she’s alive and breathing and failing and still here. She’s here. She’s still right here.

#lady whump #pet whump #whump #whump writing #bbu #box babe #caretaker turned whumper #angst #migraines #grief #aftermath of conditioning #lost cause jude #summerofwhump #summerofwhump22

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datawyrms · 5 years ago

Text

Prove it with one hand behind your back

Dannymay day 12: Gloves There is reference to the events in Hypothesis, but can be read stand alone. Now Ao3′d “Uhhh, Danny?” Jazz called up the stairs, laundry basket under her arm.

“What? I’ll get my stuff when it’s dry!” Her brother yelled back down, apparently not interested in leaving his room so they could speak semi-normally.

“Normally it would be my duty as your sister to throw your wash on the floor. Were you aware your laundry is glowing?”

Her frazzled brother appeared at the stairs then, taking them two at a time. “Geeze Jazz, tell the whole neighborhood why don’t ya?” he hissed as he passed.

“Mom and Dad aren’t here, and you’re welcome.”

“Obviously. Jerk.” he made an exaggerated frown at her before ducking into the washer, dragging out handfuls of the expected tee-shirts and jeans followed by an impressive amount of mismatched lightly glowing gloves.

“You’re taking trophies now?” she raised an eyebrow, unsure what to make of it. Not a single one had a pair, and none of them were even his ghost form’s hazmat gloves. Quite a few of them looked rather elaborate, some very interesting embroidered patterns making it obviously not something of her brother’s making. Delicacy was not his strong suit.

“Huh? No! These are-” he paused, taking a breath as he covered the glowing handwear with several shirts. “You remember that whole Sam got dragged to the ghost zone because Aragon’s an idiot thing?”

“The self important dragon shapeshifter with some serious hangups and anger issues?”

“Yeah, that one.” he nodded, rubbing at his chin. “Did I mention Dora sort of knighted us for helping drive him out of power?”

“No, but I’m pretty used to you leaving out important details by now.” Jazz smirked as her little brother rolled his eyes.

“It was nice of her and all but apparently they have a sort of tradition in her Kingdom? Where to show you’re worthy of joining the Queen’s guard you challenge one of the newest knights to a duel.” Danny paused to fish out one of the gloves. “Giving over a glove is basically how they ask for that duel. All very formal, I’d write it down if I could explain how I know without completely blowing my cover.”

“So you’ve got a bunch of medieval ghosts throwing gloves at you and wanting to duel...and you decided to wash them. At home.” Jazz crossed her arms. “Seriously?’

“Where else was I gonna do it? I thought they’d make decent proof so show Dad ghosts have society and rules.” He paused, throwing the glowing thing back under his regular clothes. “Then I remembered there’s no way I could explain how I got these. So now they’ll just smell nice in Sam’s closet or something.”

“Your closet a little too risky this time?”

“Nope. All of these belong to Sam. She’s the one getting all the challenges, not me.” he glanced down at his basket. “I think she named some of these.”

“It’s it a little unfair for a ghost to fight a human? That goes against the whole honourable and fair thing it seems to be going for.”

The half ghost grinned. “That’s what they think! Challenged gets to set the rules, and it turns out ghost knights are really, really bad at adjusting to ground only combat.”

Jazz blinked, the part that had been bothering her clicking into place. “Wait, so there’s that many because you’re still the newest knights?”

“Wasted every single challenger. I keep trying to convince them they’ll have a better shot against me, but noooo, they insist on trying to best the ‘breathing banshee’.” he shrugs. “Most of em would absolutely wreck me in a proper fight, I don’t usually need to fight ‘fair’ or anything.”

“So why don’t they go after Tucker? Getting all the way out here for a tradition can’t be easy.”

“He still insists he’s Friar Tuck. You don’t swordfight the clergy. None of them have actually called him on it, so maybe he is?” his brow furrowed, thinking on that. “Maybe I should ask Dora that sometime. Find out if we need to worry about some ghost pope later. Would not want to be the guy who punched the dragon queen’s ghost pope.”

Jazz couldn’t suppress a snort, easily able to picture such a mishap. “A year ago if you said that I’d say you should be committed. Now I’m just nodding along.”

“Even if you were saying it now, I’d get out.” A wicked grin accompanied a flash of green eyes.

“Very funny, dork.” Still, the idea was worth thinking about. “Well I can see why you wanted to try using them as proof.” The project was rather important to Danny, seeing as it was his best shot to get their parents to re-evaluate their ‘ghosts are mindless’ stance. “Maybe you could get Tucker to film a fight? Sam keeping ‘contaminated’ gloves wouldn’t seem that weird, and the variety can prove it’s not just one ghost mindlessly repeating the same behaviour.”

“I’d still be stuck explaining how Sam became ‘Sir Manson’ in the ghost zone. Which seems like a disaster waiting to happen.” his shoulders sagged. “They’ll think I made it up or Tucker did some video editing.”

“I still think it’s worth trying. Sam’s got a rich family, you could probably think up an excuse that she’s practically ‘royalty’ and that’s why they come.”

“Eh. Maybe. Don’t tell Sam but I’m giving the challengers tips now. The sooner they stop coming, the sooner I can stop getting all antsy about a ghost attack where I find out it’s another steel welding glove thrower.”

Jazz set her shoulders, determined to get some of that humour back in her dispirited sibling. “Use that. They owe you if you help them out, don’t they?”

“Well, I guess they do. Like I’ve had them tell me stories about what it’s like for them, if they remember stuff or have always been ghosts, they’re pretty chatty to a ‘fellow of the sword’...but it’s all stuff I write down. I can’t prove a ghost told me. I can’t film it, or have Dad listen in. The second they call me ‘Sir Phantom’ I’m toast.”

“He said he’d at least listen to what you found, right? It can be a starting point, and if you have some really specific detail it’s less likely that you made the whole thing up.” she stopped to ruffle his hair. “That, and if you were going to make something up, you’d have some star ghosts or ecto-aliens.”

“I would not!”

“Yes you would. And you’d draw them little space ships and everything.”

“...Okay maybe I’d make up some ships.”

“A lot of ships. With long complicated names. With scientific reasons for those names. Cus your my dorky little brother.”

“Well you’re my nagging big sister. You get to be the black hole equivalent.”

“Just don’t give up on the idea so quickly, okay? It’s a good one, and it really can’t hurt too much to try.”

A small smile returned as he elbowed her “Careful, or they’ll think you’re being influenced by ghosts too.”

“It’s not like their theories can have any more concrete proof than yours does. What are they?”

“Dad thinks ectoplasm naturally ‘homes in’ on stuff over here, and that’s how they’re finding the portal.” he closes his eyes, foot kicking at the floor. “He’s got this box thing? A lot of box things with different kinds of ectoplasm to see if they move towards ‘our world’ over time. I keep forgetting it’s floating right next to the portal and almost kick it.” his face turns into a grimace. “Dad thinks ‘that ghost kid’ is messing with his experiment on purpose now, so that sucks.”

“Well you could mess with it on purpose, that would be intelligent.”

“Nope. That would be the ‘natural aggressive action’ towards human materials. Tried it.”

“What’s mom’s hypothesis then?”

“That the portal always being here makes this part of Earth more ectoplasm rich so they’re drawn to enter here instead.” he waves a hand. “She’s half right? I don’t think strong ghosts can go all that long without ducking back home to recharge. She’s using the frequency of ‘higher level’ ghosts as proof that they ‘need’ a certain level to function outside of the ghost zone.”

“Another theory you’re accidentally stomping all over.”

“Since they almost never spot ‘Phantom’ going back to the Zone, yeah. I apparently account for ninety four percent of all ghost sightings. Yet only three percent of that is being spotted outside of a fight. Which sounds really bad! No wonder they think I only think about fighting other ghosts.” he rubbed at the back of his head. “I think she plans to test that by uh. Sticking a ghost in a place with no ectoplasm to see how long they hold out, if at all. So I’ve kinda been...making sure she can’t do that.” he swallows, his glance towards his sister more timid than anything. “It'd be a really, really nasty way to die. From what I heard.”

“Good for you. She’ll thank you once you prove that sort of thing would be unethical.”

His frown didn’t move. “If I prove it. So far I’ve just proven they really don’t like that ghost kid.”

“From what I’ve heard you’re the one with the most solid proof. Once you’ve shown everything you’ve collected, then you could try convincing them to see for themselves you aren’t making it up.” Jazz urged, not wanting to watch her little brother give up again.

“Even if I could convince Dad to come in the specter speeder with me we’d scare most ghosts off. The ones we don’t might want to beat me up, or not use a name I can’t explain away.”

“Sam gets to set when one of those challenges happens right? Invite him to one of those.”

He blinked. “...I guess that might work. If Sam made it clear that they couldn’t say my name under any circumstances. There’s one lady who keeps coming, insists she’s going to be the one to get to succeed after ‘Slapping Sir Manson with her glove’, she might be down for that…” he caught the weird look Jazz was giving him. “Oh. Apparently if you’re rivals hitting the person with your glove is ‘provoking your betters’ into a fight? So it’s a respect thing? I don’t really get it. Sam thinks it’s great, which I didn’t see coming but I didn’t think we’d still be having ghost knight fights either.” he let out a breath. “I’m rambling again.”

“You know, if Mom and Dad could see how you talk about this stuff they’d know you aren’t making it up. Looks like ghost research does run in the family.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “I’m a ghost hunter if anything. It’s just nice being able to chat instead of fight sometimes. The ghost zone is pretty neat. If you know, half the stuff in there wasn’t trying to skin me alive.”

“I still think you have a good shot. You know it’s true, so they’ll have to see it given enough time.”

“Maybe. Can’t really talk about this stuff to them though. Gee dad, how do I know about Frostbite? Well when I stole the Ecto-Skeleton and shoved back Pariah Dark this whole tribe of yetis decided I was their Great One. So now we’re pals. Oh what’s that dad, you say the ghost kid did that? Funny thing!” he dropped his arms with a scowl. “That’d go over like a lead balloon.”

“Maybe stick to the dragon queen society for now. It’s not like anyone over here saw that. Then you can expand into the rest of the friendly areas.” she put a hand on his shoulder. “One step at a time Danny, you’ll get there.”

“I hope so. If it doesn’t, I blame you if I’m torn molecule by molecule.”

“Ew Danny! Don’t be so morbid, it’s not good for your development.”

“Is it morbid if I’m dead?” he winced from his sister’s whack to the head. “Ow! Half!”

“Better. Now scram with all those gloves before someone thinks you robbed a ghost antique boutique.”

“You’re such a busybody Jazz.” the half ghost teased before darting off with his half spectral laundry. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to convince their parents, but he did seem to be on the right track. So of course it was her job to make sure he stuck to it. Siblings had to look out for each other, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

#dannymay2020 #Danny Phantom #danny fenton #jazz fenton #my stuff #the best thing about fanfic is you can ignore all the stupid parts of an episode #catfight beauty contest? never heard of it #dragon ghost society? heck yeah lets go #danny's trying really hard to get usable proof!#More positive fenton bonding #dang it!

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moonflowerlesbians · 4 years ago

Text

I took a quick break from prompts to write 5000 words of pure angst. I hope you’ll forgive me.

“we let precious time go by”

Read on AO3.

Summary: “The day will come when she returns to an empty flat, or she’ll wake to a cold pillow beside her. If she’s lucky, she’ll be there when the beast pounces. She’ll get to say goodbye.

A piece of her will die that day, she knows.

Dani will die that day.”

Word Count: 5088

They live together thirteen years after Bly. Thirteen wonderful years in a little flat in a small town in Vermont that looks like the spirit of Christmas itself retched on every building in the wintertime. They sell poinsettias and wreaths of holly for the holidays and budding perennials in the warmer months. They find the cheapest grocer, the best plumber, the man who drives into town selling fresh eggs on Wednesdays.

They befriend an elderly woman with three toy poodles, who stops by The Leafling every Sunday morning before mass to purchase flowers for her late husband’s grave, and they try not to think of Hannah. The daycare center three doors down marches the children to the park twice a day, right past the shop, and they try not to think of Rebecca and the Wingraves. They learn the quickest route to their favorite take-away place by heart, and they try not to think of Owen.

It’s hard, though, when your world’s been shattered and everyone else is carrying on as if nothing’s happened. But, thirteen years go by, and they manage. They manage, even as Dani becomes a bit less like herself every day, and Jamie struggles to pretend everything is fine. She pretends not to notice when she finds a sock in the freezer or Dani’s toothbrush between the couch cushions. Pretends not to notice when the lines on Dani’s face grow deeper, etched into her fair skin like stone, and she pretends not to notice when Dani wakes in the dead of night to gaze out the window for hours on end, then returns to bed as if she never left.

She’d brought it up with Dani over dinner. She had grasped Dani’s hand ever so gently, running a soothing thumb over the knuckles. Dani looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. Maybe she hadn’t. A tear tracked down her cheek and dropped onto her lap.

“Please, love, please let me help,” Jamie had begged, and she had never meant anything more in her life, save the night she had accepted Dani’s ring.

Dani had observed her sadly, centuries of knowledge weighing heavy behind her eyes. “You can’t.”

“Please, Dani.” She hadn’t meant to break down, she hadn’t. She had meant to be strong, a steadfast rock in a stormy sea.

“Jamie…” Dani’s voice had been soft, resigned. “It’s her.” She looked down at her clasped hands, as if unwilling to bear witness the damage sure to show on Jamie’s face.

This was meant to be dinner, a question about a frozen sock, an easy explanation. Just a little swamped with the shop’s finances. A natural remedy she had read about in a magazine. Not this. Anything but this.

Jamie had known the day might come, when the memories they’d repressed would reappear to haunt them like Peter fucking Quint. She had hoped with every fibre of herself that the ghastly woman from that terrible night at the lake would slumber for decades yet.

Christ, how long had the Lady been awake? How long had Dani kept this from her?

Dani had seemed to sense her question. She’d become too good at that as of late.

“Only a few months.”

A few months.

Jamie’s lips had tightened into a thin line, and she forced herself to swallow back a sob, eyes closed.

“Dani, why-?”

Why didn’t you tell me?

Why now?

Why this?

Why them?

“You don’t deserve this,” Dani had said, and Jamie’s heart shattered. “It’s my burden, not yours--”

“No. No, no--”

“--I can’t ask you to take this on. I invited her in; I condemned myself, not you.”

“Stop, Dani, stop.”

“Jamie, please…” Dani had sounded so small, so broken. “You have to go.”

“No,” Jamie had refused outright. “Never.”

“Then me. I’ll leave.”

“No one is going bloody anywhere.” Jamie had been steely calm, even as her ribcage threatened to break with the effort. “You and I are staying right fucking here. You hear me, Dani? Right here.” She hadn’t been able to hide the crack on the final syllable. Her ring caught the warm glow of the kitchen light.

Jamie took a steadying breath. “When you came home with that wee plant, you know what I thought? I thought, ‘ah, shite, she’s gone and found another lost cause.’” Here, Jamie had given a small smile. “‘And I bloody love her for it.’”

Dani wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Haven’t got a clue how you always see the possibility in everything. No one’s too far gone to save with you around, Poppins. It’s exhausting, really,” Jamie had continued. “I took your ring, and I’ve never regretted it. Not once, yeah? Not once. I knew what I signed up for: lovin’ you, relentless optimism an’ all.” Her laugh had been watery. “So, we’re not goin’ anywhere. It’s us, yeah? Always has been, always will be.”

So Dani had stayed. And Jamie redoubled her efforts to support her.

She runs the errands on the evenings where the dark feels all too familiar and returns to Dani huddled beneath a fleece blanket. She wraps Dani in her arms and soothes the nightmares away with feather-light kisses. She’s there in every way she can be, never pressing, never rushing, and never letting Dani see just how utterly terrified she is.

To tell Dani would be to ruin the careful dynamic they’ve reached. Dani is scattered, rain moving with the wind; Jamie has to be grounded, a stake dug deep into the earth. But the slopes grow muddier the longer the rain pours, and dirt washes away, gone like a rushing stream. Jamie knows she can’t keep this up forever. She’s already lost so much, and her most important person is fading fast, swept up in the rising current.

She loves Dani to the stars and back. Which is why Jamie must bear this load alone. Dani is already carrying the sky on her shoulders, and Jamie cannot burden her with this.

Call her stupid, call her noble. She calls it mercy.

She knows she’s pulling the same shit Dani did not telling her that Her Royal Lakeness was stirring. She knows, and she resents herself for it. She also knows that Dani would look at her with such guilt for causing Jamie strife. Dani would try to mask her hurt to spare her wife, and Jamie’s gut wrenches at the thought. Her brow would crinkle, lips pursed, and Jamie would yearn to kiss the stress from her face.

Jamie is rewarded for her silence. Dani is getting better about vocalizing her nightmares, telling Jamie when the Lady makes an appearance as she slumbers. They embrace beneath the covers and speak between labored breaths, where Dani finally caves and Jamie does her best to hide the way she’s become afraid of the dark. She murmurs reassurances and tells herself they’re for Dani, pressing kisses into her forehead.

Dani sleeps tucked into Jamie’s side as though it’s enough to ward off the ghosts, a formidable wall against things that go bump in the night. She sleeps, and Jamie lies awake. Her defense is slipping. She can’t keep them both afloat.

She can try. She can hold out as long as Dani will have her. She will. She doesn’t know anything else. Jamie swears, she swears on her plants, she swears on her life, she swears to anyone who will listen that she will be there for Dani, even if she can’t be there for herself.

The weeks pass and more socks freeze, more toothbrushes go missing, and Dani drifts. Some days are better than others. Some days, Jamie’s Sisyphean task is easy, and Dani meets her at the top of the mountain with a flirty smile and sunshine on her greedy tongue, with hands that grab at Jamie’s belt and tug her shirt up and over her head. On those days, they feel like themselves.

But, on other days, days when the whole world is overcast and the tide is rising, they shutter the shop and lock the doors to their second-floor flat. They wear matching pajamas, while the television set plays classic cinema. Jamie makes tea; Dani still hasn’t mastered it in a decade, and Jamie doubts she ever will. Their legs tangle in a heap, ankles sliding along calves.

Jamie comes to rest her head on Dani’s sternum, allowing the beat of her heart to remind her that they’re here. Dani is here, breathing steadily and weaving their fingers together like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like they aren’t living borrowed years. Like Jamie’s mantra of one day at a time doesn’t feel like a splintered crutch beneath her arm, supporting the weight of an impossible situation.

Every day feels like the last, and Jamie hates it. She hates the feeling of inevitability that lurks just out of sight. The beast in the jungle, Dani had said. It prowls between streetlamps and seeks refuge in their walls, skittering away when Jamie shines a torch, only to return the instant she turns her back. The creature is waiting for something Jamie can never see, and it terrifies her. She cannot prevent what she cannot see. All she can do is wait, hopeless, at the mercy of a fucking ghost.

The day will come when she returns to an empty flat, or she’ll wake to a cold pillow beside her. If she’s lucky, she’ll be there when the beast pounces. She’ll get to say goodbye.

A piece of her will die that day, she knows.

Dani will die that day.

And, god, she feels so bloody selfish for thinking of her own fucking self-preservation when the woman she loves might one day disappear from the world, but, Christ, how can she be expected to go on like this? Just waiting for the days to pass until she’s alone again. Again.

She’s lost more people than she can count. Some to time, some to death, some to drink, some to the shelter of a warm embrace Jamie could not provide. Each loss is different, yet each brings about a sting that is painfully familiar. An old bedfellow she’s forced to accommodate. It settles in her bones, nestling into the hollow spaces between her ribs, cold and unwelcome. Once it latches on, it never truly leaves.

The ache is ever-present, a plate of steel, layering and building into a grim suit of armor that clashes and clanks and frightens people away with its noise, and, after a while, she forgets. Forgets what it’s like to be free of those reminders that she wasn’t good enough for people to stay. Wasn’t good enough for her parents, nor her foster parents. Wasn’t good enough for classmates and teachers who deemed her a waste of effort. Wasn’t good enough for women who hid themselves from the world or from their own judgment. Hell, she wasn’t even good enough for the prison system, released early on account of behavior.

She forgets how to breathe without each inhale taking the strength of someone who’s had a scarlet letter branded across her chest her whole life. Forgets how it feels to extend a hand in invitation without her own fear dragging her down, the fear that results from rejected companionship and harsh words. She forgets what it’s like to touch and be touched and to lay yourself bare before another, trusting that you are safe and wanted.

Dani had taken her proffered hand and held it to tender lips. She had glacially pried away nearly three decades of fine steel with the care of a dutiful lover, uncovering the origin of each piece as she went. She had never once flinched away, only nodded with sweet understanding and kissed Jamie a little more fervently that night.

Then, one day, Jamie had found herself the lightest she’d ever been, open and vulnerable beneath Dani’s affectionate gaze. She had breathed, and it had felt like a sigh. The old ache was not gone; it could never truly be banished. But the act of sharing her very soul, and receiving Dani’s in return, had turned bruises into mere memories and fear into excitement.

Her armor had sat, gathering dust in a corner of their life, no longer needed. She had been content to let Dani, or, rather, the security of their relationship, be her protection.

Now, though, with the ground they walk upon growing perilous, Jamie is defenseless. Her own beast hungers, prepared to strike with familiar claws, and Jamie loathes that she is reaching for her old guard. Loathes that she even considers distancing herself. That Dani cannot escape the cruelty of a fate brought on by selflessness, and Jamie is pondering how life will go on without her.

It feels so bloody selfish that it makes Jamie sick to her stomach. It’s only human to fret about the future, but this feels like an especially abominable twist of the knife. And Dani can never know. No, never. Jamie will be strong for her. She needs to be unwavering in her dedication to their love.

She manages, though it feels like standing in the middle of the road, watching a lorry drive toward her at a hundred kilometers an hour and choosing not to move out of the way. Rather, she plants her feet firmly on the asphalt and stares down what will surely splinter every bone in her body if it doesn’t kill her.

For Dani, she tells herself.

Dani, who startles at unseen reflections in their dishes and damn near scares the living daylights out of Jamie. There’s a haunted look in her eye, and, suddenly, Jamie can hear their countdown clock ticking away the seconds without Dani having to say a word. Her chest is heaving as Jamie steps in front of her, inspecting her for signs of physical harm, and blocking the faucet from her line of sight. Dani can’t meet her eye, craning her neck to see the sink.

Her voice is hoarse, ragged. “I saw her.”

No. No, no, no, no. Dreams are one thing. Dreams, Jamie can handle. Bad dreams can be banished with soothing caresses and warm tea, but this? They are both very much awake.

Breathe.

“What did you see?” Jamie seeks confirmation to calm her racing pulse.

Dani’s lip trembles, and she clutches frantically at the countertop. “Her.” It’s little more than a whisper, but the meaning is unmistakable. Dani continues, with painstaking deliberacy. “I keep seeing her.”

Christ. Keep seeing her? The sheer terror in Dani’s tone implies this isn’t the first time the ghost has appeared to her. But it is the first Jamie is hearing of it. No, not this again. Not Dani keeping from her the details of the most horrific secret of their lives.

She can’t stop to process this now. Dani is shaking, and Dani is frightened, and Dani needs her here, in this moment, not dwelling on what this means for the course of their lives.

Jamie turns the tap off and pulls the drain. “We’re gonna be okay. You can’t think the worst.” The words sound hollow, even to her own ears, but she tries, god, does she try to mean them with everything she has.

“Jamie…” Dani’s tone is warning.

Don’t lie to me.

I have to, love, Jamie thinks, I have to, or we’ll both give up, and I’m not ready.

“We could have so many more years together.”

Could.

It’s not technically a lie. ‘Could’ leaves room for uncertainty, the unpredictability of an entity so far beyond the scope of their control that they’d be institutionalized for suggesting such a thing exists. ‘Could’ allows them to pretend they aren’t trapped on a preordained path, walking side by side into inevitable grief. ‘Could’ is hope.

“It’s okay,” Jamie hears herself repeating. Distract. “I’ll do the washing up from now on, yeah? You’re shit at it, anyway.”

It earns her a weak chuckle from Dani, and it’s enough. Jamie holds her close, speaking soft comforts, though her stomach roils and knots. Dani trembles in her arms, and Jamie curls a soothing hand to the back of her head.

It’s going to be okay.

It isn’t.

It isn’t, and, deep down, Jamie knows it isn’t, but she holds onto the falsehood like it’s the only thing keeping her from drowning. She has to believe that there’s hope, that there is a chance for a future for them, because if she doesn’t, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Her mind screams to prepare for the inevitable worst, but a part of her, that bright, sunshiney part, where she holds her fondest thoughts, tells her to pretend just a while longer.

She does. She does, because she loves Dani too much not to. They’ve been through far too much together for Jamie to withdraw now, when Dani needs her most.

She cannot control who lives and who dies. She said as much to Dani, years ago, in the forest behind the manor. Knowing that everything must come to an end dictates life’s joys. Temporality is the driving force of sanctity. The moments we hold most dear are the ones that have come to an end. They are forever preserved in amber memory, pressed between book pages, and flowing through veins. You are left warm, free to continue and free to leave more life behind in the hollows of lingering remorse.

‘Live in the moment,’ say thousands of song lyrics. If only it were that simple. If only Jamie could simply ignore the consequences and allow herself to just exist with Dani in the life they’ve created. She can’t, though, and it is agonizing.

Instead, she dons the facade of a woman who believes that there is still good in the world, chances for miracles, despite countless experiences to the contrary. In private, she grieves a life she hasn’t yet lost.

Dani sees her shoulders shake only once, the day Jamie returns to a flooded flat and eerie silence and Dani with her face mere centimetres above the water in their overfilled bathtub. The tips of her hair are submerged, and her breath sends ripples across the surface. It’s unclear how long she’s been hunched over the side of the tub, but judging by the pool around her, quite a while. Jamie turns off the tap and draws Dani back onto her heels. Dani lets out a panicked gasp, and her eyes dart around the room before they finally flick to Jamie and back to the water.

“Do you see her?” Dani rasps, returning to her position bent over the rim.

Jamie peers into the tub, too, unsure of what she might find. She does not know whether to be elated or dismayed when only Dani’s heterochromatic reflection stares back at her.

“I only see you,” Jamie says, and it seems to pull Dani from wherever she’s been. The sleeves of her bathrobe are soaked, and she notices the puddle around her knees. She stammers an apology, but Jamie could not care less. Dani sags against Jamie’s firm grip on her upper arm.

Her voice comes subdued, as if each syllable takes monumental effort. “I’m so tired, Jamie.”

Jamie understands. She feels it, too, the toll this has taken on the both of them. The constant glances over her shoulder, always on alert for any sign of danger, living their lives like prey. She cannot hope to equate her exhaustion with Dani’s, but she understands all the same.

Dani continues, using such frightful terms as “fade away,” and it’s all Jamie can do to swallow the lump in her throat and the tightness in her chest. Dani sounds so timid, so lost, and she’s looking to Jamie for answers she hasn’t the faintest notion how to find and the soil is eroding and the current is quickening and it all becomes too much.

“You’re still here,” she says, like that will make everything alright. The wet tile seeps into her trousers, cold and clammy.

“It’s like I see you right in front of me,” Dani says softly, “and I feel you touching me. And, every day, we’re living our lives, and I’m aware of that, and it’s like I don’t feel it all the way.” She readjusts to study the water again. “I’m not even scared of her anymore. I just stare at her, and,” Dani takes a shuddering breath, “it’s getting harder and harder to see me.”

Jamie’s already strained resolve is rent in two. All of the air is sucked out of her lungs at once, and her heart constricts. She cannot help the well of tears that rises behind her eyes and threatens to spill over. She needs to be resilient, needs to set her emotions aside. For Dani.

But Dani is nodding. She’s nodding and crying and saying things like, “Maybe I should just accept that and go.” It’s excruciatingly similar to the conversation they’d had at the dinner table, all those many months ago.

And Jamie breaks. “No. No, no, no.” Her thumb rubs circles into Dani’s wrist. “Not yet.”

You can’t leave me. I’m not ready.

“Jamie…” Dani says in that same, horrid, broken tone, and suddenly, Jamie knows. Their hourglass contains mere grains. They are nearing the end, and it hurts, and the pain is so much worse than she could have ever anticipated.

Dani has all but given up, and Jamie is fucking furious.

Not with Dani. Never with Dani.

Rather, Jamie has a bone to pick with the universe and its sense of righteousness. There’s no such thing as fairness in the world, as has been proven to her time and time again. But this? This is shit, and it’s not fucking fair. Just this once, she’d like to strike a bargain. Allow her to be selfish, just this once. Allow her to remain at Dani’s side until they grow old and grey and their eyes fail and their joints creak. Allow her this one thing, and she will never ask for anything again.

The universe, in all its cruelty, remains silent, and Jamie resents it even more. She resents the set of circumstances that led them to this point, Dani tearful on the bathroom floor. She resents the world that made the woman she loves hurt in unfathomable ways. She resents that the most marvelous woman Jamie has ever met has been reduced to a shell of herself, harboring an invisible intruder.

She resents that all she has to offer is herself, when Dani deserves so much more. It’s all Jamie has, though, and maybe, this time, it will be enough.

“If you can’t feel anything,” she says, voice wavering, “then I’ll feel everything for the both of us.” Dani opens her mouth with quivering lips to speak and is cut off. “But no one is going anywhere. Okay? You’re still here.” A tear escapes, tracing a trail down her cheek.

“What if,” Dani whispers, more afraid than Jamie has ever seen her, “I’m here, sitting next to you. But I’m just really her?”

Jamie chokes down a sob. She exhales. “One day at a time.”

They clean up the water and blow out the candles and eat a quiet meal of pasta and sauce from a jar, holding hands all the while, as if any loss of contact would be to admit defeat. Dani is here, and Jamie is here, and they are together, and when they lay in the dark that night, they do not sleep.

Jamie hovers over Dani, pressing gentle kisses to every bit of skin she can reach. Dani’s eyelids, her knuckles, her wrists. The hollow on the underside of her knee, her clavicle, the sensitive patch just below her ear. Anything to reassure Dani that she can still feel, she is loved, and she is safe. The act is not erotic, nor is it meant to be.

She pours every ounce of passion into every caress, touching Dani as if it was the first time. She endeavors to convey her message, clear as crystal, that Dani is the single most important thing in her life. Their love is all that matters. For this one night, let them forget about ghosts and manors and lost friends and be wholly present in this moment of solemn intimacy.

Jamie commits every kiss to memory, savoring Dani’s smooth skin beneath her lips. The way she sighs and whimpers when Jamie finds a particularly tender spot, the way she relaxes into Jamie’s embrace when they finally settle, a leg thrown haphazardly between Jamie’s thighs, her face pressed just above Jamie’s breast, sending small puffs of air against Jamie’s sleepshirt.

Dani sleeps, and Jamie’s mind wanders to all the words she wishes she could say. She sighs them into the night air, a hand cupping the nape of Dani’s neck.

I love you, she thinks, and I’m going to lose you, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. She inhales the faintly floral scent of Dani’s shampoo. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair that you’re going to go, and I have to go on without you. Think of me, Dani. Think of me and stay because I can’t explain to your mother what’s happened to you. Stay, because I’m not ready for our life to end.

She’s crying, now, and her tears dampen the top of Dani’s head as she tries to remain still.

You’re in pain. I see it, love, and I never, never want you to hurt. You’ve been so damn brave. You’ve fought so hard. For yourself. For us. I will be forever grateful for the time you’ve given me. You are everything I never thought I could have, my love.

Dani stirs against her with a hushed, confused noise. “Jamie? Wha-?”

“Go back to sleep, baby,” Jamie murmurs, her eyes shut tight. Dani nuzzles into her chest, and only when her breathing evens out once more does Jamie release the tension from her limbs.

Rest, sweetheart, you’ve earned it.

Three days go by, and Jamie spends them at Dani’s side. They walk the streets of their little Vermont town, and they greet the old woman with her three toy poodles. They watch the line of children toddle by on their way to the park, shepherded by exasperated adults, and share a smile. They wrap themselves in blankets and bundle on the sofa, Jamie with a book and Dani with a crochet project that Jamie’s been teasing her about finishing. The tea is hot, and the company is good, and Jamie is happy. The rain comes down against their windows, but they are shielded from the deluge, though the soil outside turns to slick mud.

The sun rises on the fourth day, and Jamie blinks awake. The pillow is soft under her head, and she is loath to move. She reaches a tentative hand to Dani’s side of the bed to pull her closer, but she finds the sheets are cold. Jamie’s stomach leaps to her throat. She sits up, peering around their room, listening for any sign that Dani has simply risen early. The clock on the bedside table reads six-thirty-eight in the morning. Beside it, a single sheet of paper folded in half.

Perhaps Dani has run to the coffeehouse to bring back breakfast. Perhaps she has gone for a walk. Perhaps she has done anything except Jamie’s worst fear come to fruition, but what Jamie knows in her soul to be true. She takes a steadying breath as she examines the thing in her hands. With shaking fingers, she unfolds the note.

The script is slanted, a mixture of cursive and print, as if written in a hurry. The ink has smeared in places, where the page appears to have been wet. Dani’s normally neat lettering is scattered.

Jamie,

I can’t risk you.

Not for one more day.

I love you.

Dani

Her heart stops.

The silence is deafening. Her whole world narrows to the thin yellow paper in her hand. Her last piece of the woman she loves.

She knows what has happened. She knows where Dani would go, where Dani has gone, deep in her core. But she has to be certain.

It is her first plane ride without Dani. She spends the six-hour flight clutching the armrest, knuckles white, as she looks straight ahead. The flight attendant has the decency to only appear mildly perplexed by Jamie’s lack of luggage. When she lands, Jamie can only nod at the cabbie’s futile attempts at conversation.

She gazes up at the daunting manor house, its brick overgrown with English ivy. The grounds lay vacant. The path to the lake is unkept, yet she treads it anyway, past the church, past the cemetery, slowing as the water comes into sight.

How badly she wants to be wrong. How badly she wants to return home and find Dani worried out of her beautiful mind.

The water is unseasonably warm, but that does not stop the chill that permeates Jamie’s bones. She swims out as far as she can bear before holding her breath and plunging below the surface. It’s nigh torturous to keep her eyes open, but she needs to see. She needs to be sure.

Everything is blurry through the liquid lens, fuzzy around the edges. Something stands out from the landscape of green and blue. A spot of porcelain and red against a backdrop of emerald.

No.

Jamie shakes her head.

No, please, no.

But it is.

And she screams. She screams out thirteen years of rage and sadness and grief and frustration and love. The sound is muted, but she does not care. Dani is gone, and she is alone and it burns and stings like nothing Jamie has ever felt.

Everything Jamie could give, she gave. It wasn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough. Nothing will bring Dani back.

She rises to the surface with a cry, paddling to the muddy shoreline and crawling up the bank to collapse in the shallows. Her ring rests heavy on her left hand. A reminder of promises made. Eternity.

Together. They were supposed to stay together.

It’s us. Always has been, always will be. That’s what we said, Poppins.

She gasps, taking in great lungfuls of air that Dani will never breathe again. Her hair hangs limply, plastered to the sides of her face. She shivers, but she cannot move.

She sits in the shallows of the lake at Bly Manor, and she weeps.

Dani is dead.

And Jamie is alone.

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mrsreinhart · 5 years ago

Text

Lili Reinhart Grows Up

The Riverdale actress plots her move to the big screen

Lili Reinhart almost didn’t sign on to co-star in Hustlers. The 23-year-old Riverdale star—Generation Z’s Blake Lively—was sent the script by her team, with the note that the director, Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler), wanted to meet with her. But Reinhart blanched when she saw the logline: “‘Strippers in New York drug and rob men on Wall Street.’ And I was immediately like, ‘Oooh, this is probably not the vibe that I want.’”

But after she conveyed that message to her team, they persisted. “They were like, Read the script. So I did, and it was obviously amazing.”

Reinhart feels pretty good about that decision now. Hustlers—which stars Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, as well as Cardi B and Lizzo in small roles—promises to be the sort of buzzy, commercially successful film that seems almost too well constructed and well timed to be true for a young television star aiming to embark on a movie career.

The actress—who grew up in Cleveland before relocating to Los Angeles—plays a stripper named Annabelle in the film, which is based on a true story about a group of Scores dancers (depicted in a 2015 New York–magazine article by Jessica Pressler). Under the guidance of a de facto den mother (Lopez), the group decides to embark on a scheme to drug affluent men by employing a potion concocted out of MDMA and ketamine. Annabelle’s function is as a sort of bait—she meets the men at a bar and then her “sisters” (Lopez, Wu, Keke Palmer) show up to join them, and, well, things get murky (for the men) from there. Whatever the opposite of nerves of steel is, that’s what Annabelle’s afflicted with, as she—in a running gag—vomits whenever things get dicey or tense, which, as you can imagine, happens quite a bit.

One of the major draws of the film for Reinhart was getting to be a part of the stellar all-female ensemble, and she says she tried her best to see her very famous co-stars as, simply, co-workers. While she says she’s “definitely seen Monster-in-Law multiple times [and] definitely had ‘On the Floor’ on my iPod Nano,” she tried to view J. Lo as the movie-actor equivalent of the person one cubicle over. “I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I really am not star-struck very much unless it’s, like, Lady Gaga … or probably Meryl Streep.… I really try to not have any preconceived notions when I meet anybody. I truly just tried to look at Jennifer as my co-star who has had … an incredible career.”

Life After Graduation

Reinhart—who plays Betty Cooper on Riverdale, one of the CW’s biggest hits of the past five years—seems destined to follow the trajectory of a Michelle Williams or Lively before her, who went from playing the female lead in a very popular television show adored by teenagers to full-fledged movie star. Making that transition in the public eye is not necessarily without its stresses, though. Reinhart is extremely close with her Riverdale co-stars, and is dating Cole Sprouse, who plays her love interest on the show. Ask the nearest 16-year-old in your vicinity and you’ll undoubtedly get a lengthy discourse on the topic. But she sounds very excited for the career phase that will start after the series has ended.

In Hustlers, Lili Reinhart, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, and Constance Wu play strippers who drug and rob wealthy men.

“Oh, God, I think I could get in trouble if I answer that too honestly,” she says, laughing, when asked how she currently feels about working on Riverdale. “I think my heart is really in films. It’s really wonderful to have a steady job and to work with a group of people who are like my family. Truly. I see them all the time. We all live in the same city.”

She says she does appreciate that the show gives her new angles of Betty to play week to week. “Riverdale has so many twists and turns and offers us, unlike I think a lot of other shows, opportunities to do so many things.... One episode it feels like I’m in a horror movie and the next episode I’m in a drama, and the next episode I’m doing a period piece. It feels like you get a piece of everything and I think that’s really what helps keep it interesting.… I’m very lucky in that regard.”

With a starring role on a breakout CW show comes a massive social-media fan base, and Reinhart now has a cool 19.8 million Instagram followers to her name. Somewhat unusual among her contemporaries, she blends the requisite magazine-photo-shoot and promotional posts with quirkier slice-of-life samplings, including memes, shots of flowers and scenery, and poems. She explains, “I don’t want someone to look at my social media and just see photos of me on a red carpet or my magazine shoots.... I don’t want to follow people who just post beautiful photos of themselves. I think that’s quite boring, so I try not to be that person.”

And she speaks with conviction about trying to present a more realistic portrayal of who she is on social media: “I’m literally laying in bed right now in a T-shirt with no makeup on because I go to work in a couple of hours, and I’m going to go to the gym after I take a nap,” she says on the phone. “My life is not always glamorous. It hardly ever is. I want people to see that.” She goes on, “I think there’s nothing more un-relatable than people who have incredibly perfect bodies and who are on yachts all the time. I’m like, ‘That’s great, but that’s not.... You’re like the 1 percent of the 1 percent, you know?’” I comment that it does feel like half of my Instagram feed was on Capri all summer, and she laughs. “I wish I had time to sail around Italy, but I’m hustling, and I’m working my ass off.”

Reinhart has also become a tabloid mainstay, due in large part to her relationship with Sprouse, which she keeps mostly private—and she does not feel an obligation to speak about or share that aspect of her life. “It’s never an intention of mine to, like, hide facts about my relationship, but it also isn’t for the world to know.”

She seems to understand that other actresses might handle the position she is in differently, and she is self-aware, and wise, about her image. “I have a little bit of a cold exterior sometimes,” she admits. “You kind of have to crack me open a little bit. I think that’s just who I am. Some people are very much an open book, and they’re warm and friendly the second you meet them. I just don’t really think that’s me. I’m a little bit more closed off, and that’s O.K. I think I don’t have to try to pretend to be something that I’m not just because I’m on a CW show and I have young fans. I don’t really need to be sharing everything about my love life and my friendships just because that’s what teens are doing right now. I feel like I cherish being more reserved.”

It’s hard, after talking to Reinhart for any period of time, to not come away with a sense that this is a woman—particularly for someone only 22—who really knows who she is and what she wants to be spending her time on. She has drive and gravitas, but also a sense of humor, not taking the Hollywood of it all too seriously. She already wrapped the coming-of-age, drama-romance film Chemical Hearts, which she stars in and for which she also serves as an executive producer. And she cites the words of Jeff Bridges when asked about the next stages of her career. “He said once that every project he does he tries to make a one-eighty from the last project that he did.”

She continues, “I’m still in this very experimental phase of my career, which is exciting because it allows for a lot of firsts.… I have the opportunity to try a lot of things and not be typecast and sort of lay the foundation, hopefully, for the rest of my career where people can be like, Oh yeah, she can play whatever role she wants to play.”

#lili reinhart

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marvelgirl7 · 5 years ago

Note

Can I request a Hal Carter "the lady and the tramp" fic? ❤️

This was for my 700 Followers Celebration. I loved this request so much! I hope everyone enjoys!

Warnings: Fluff, Romantic Hal Carter, Some Angst

Parings: Hal Carter X Lady Reader

700 Followers Celebration Masterlist

Aunt Darling and Uncle Jim were letting you stay with them for the summer. You loved your aunt and uncle were excited plus you were going to your studies as a proper Lady should. You were also excited to meet your new baby cousin.

Reading your book on the train you get lost in the story as the train signals its arrival. You smile as you put your book away and grab your bags.

“There she is Lady!” You smile and rush to your Aunt Darling and hug her. You loved her so much as you see your Uncle Jim holding baby Lulu. You smile big.

“I’m so happy to see you all.” Jim hands baby Lulu to Darling as he grabs your bags for you.

“Come on let’s get you settled, shall we?” You smile and nod following them out of the train station excited to see what this summer holds for you.

========================

Hal Carter was finishing up his shift at the steel mill and smiles as he wipes his face. He punches out his ticket and heads off. He roams the town and smiles as he skips around.

“Well if it isn’t Hal Carter you still owe me 5 bucks from that card game.” Hal’s face drops as he sees Butch, he quickly runs off.

“Get him!” Hal runs through the town bypassing cars as he jumps onto the bus and holds onto it as the bus drives off.

“I’ll get you, Carter!” Hal smirks as the bus takes him away. Not sure where he was heading Hal just stays on for the ride.

========================

You settle outside with baby Lulu as she sleeps in her cradle as you sit on the porch swing and read your book. You sing a song that Darling taught you.

La la lu, La la lu

Oh, my little star sweeper

I’ll sweep the stardust for you

You peek over and see Lulu still sleeping as you smile relaxing and enjoying this place.

=====================

Hal jumps off the bus and looks around.

“Well look Snob Hill.” He whistles as he walks down the rich neighborhood. He skips around thinking his little sister May would love it here. He tips his head to some of the fancy women walking down the sidewalk.

Hal stops hearing a beautiful voice singing he walks over following the voice as he stops and sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

“Well, I never.” She looks up hearing the voice her eyes land on Hal’s as she stands up slowly.

“Hello there.” Hal walks over smiling as he hops over the fence you giggle at him.

“Hello, Darling.” She shakes her head.

“Darling is my Aunt I’m Lady.” Hal smiles as he kisses your hand, such soft delicate skin he thinks.

You blush at his charming self and look at him his blue eyes were beautiful.

“Well Miss Lady I’m Hal and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Hal what a charming name,” Hal smirks as he notices the little cradle his heart stops as he thinks this beautiful lady is taken.

“And who is the cutie in the cradle?” Hal peeks down as you smile as baby Lulu sleeps.

“That’s Lulu my cousin.” Hal breathes a sigh of relief as he smiles back at you.

“You new in town? Just move?” You shake your head.

“I’m staying with my Aunt and Uncle. I’ve been here a few times but I’m staying here for the summer.”

Hal sits by you and smiles.

“Well, you’ll have to let me show you around, Miss Lady.” You blush as you get lost in those dazzling eyes.

“I’d like Mr. Carter.” Hal could stare at your smile forever.

“Lady is Lulu being okay for you?” Hal looks up as a nicely dressed woman walks out she looks at Hal and smiles and looks back at Lady.

“Who is your friend Lady?” Lady smiles as she takes Hal’s hand.

“This is Hal Aunt Darling.” Aunt Darling smiles.

“Nice to meet you, Hal, would you like to stay for dinner?” Hal smiles but shakes his head.

“I’d love to Ma’am, but my little sister needs me I’m all she has I need to tend to her.” Aunt Darling just stops and looks at Hal. She could tell he was working hard at the mill and lumber yard she remembers how Jim did that when they were just starting out. She looks over at how Lady is so taken by the man.

“Why don’t you bring your sister Lady could go with you.” Hal looks at Darling not expecting such kindness as he nods.

“My little sister would love that.”

====================

You had loved Hal’s little sister Mary; she was cute and so young. You thought Hal was amazing raising her. Dinner was lovely and nice Darling, and Jim seemed to love Hal’s stories and little Mary was so cute talking to baby Lulu. You smile watching them all.

“Hal you should escort Lady to the yearly picnic we have. I know Lady would love that.” Your cheeks turn red as you nod staring over at his blue sparkling eyes.

“It would be my honor.” Mary giggles as Aunt Darling gushes on her.

“I have the perfect dress for little Mary! Lady remember the first dress you wore to the picnic?” You nod not taking your eyes off Hal.

“I saved it and Mary you will look so cute so pretty in it.” She giggles more as Hal and you just stare lost in each other’s eyes.

=====================

Aunt Darling and Uncle Jim took to Hal fast as well as Mary, and you will, of course, you were smitten for him.

“Can I take you around the town?” Hal asks one day as you read a book you look up and smile big.

“Yes.” Aunt Darling overhearing smiles big.

“You leave Mary with us okay Hal we will take good care for you two kids have fun.” She winks and smiles as Hal turns a shade of red.

You couldn’t wait to go on this date with Hal and see where he’d take you.

================

The stroll through the city was beautiful as Hal held your arm and escorted you all over. He took you to his favorite Italian restaurant. Tony was a good friend of Hals and he treated you two special. You get lost in his eyes as Tony serenades you two. You smile as Hal pulls you close and you two dance.

After the dinner, you and Hal head out to Hal’s favorite spot, this place on top of a big hill.

“Look at the sky they have stars in their eyes,” Hal whispers as you snuggle in his arms he holds you close.

“I’d love life with you, Lady.” He whispers as you nod and smile.

“Me too Hal, I want to live my life with you.” He smiles as he kisses you deeply under the stars. A promise of something great.

====================

The picnic was amazing seeing everyone and watching as little Mary giggled and had so much fun. Hal looked so charming, so draper Uncle Jim had gotten him dressed up. You chuckle as some of the girls flirt with Hal, but he only had eyes for you.

Hal smiled watching you and Mary dance he loved how you and your aunt took on being there for her. She needed a good woman role model.

“I can’t believe they let any trash in here.” Hal looks to see his old friend Alan glaring at him. Hal sighs.

“Good to see you, Alan…” Alan scuffs as he watches Lady and Mary.

“I see you’ve cuddled up with someone… Listen, Hal, you don’t belong here, you may have a nice suit on, but you do not belong with us. Especially someone as sweet and kind as Lady, you’ll just ruin her.”

Hal looks over and sees how happy you are and his heart hurts. Alan looks over at where your dancing again.

“She deserves a good man a man who can provide for her and make her dreams come true. You are just a mill and lumber yard worker your nothing Hal.”

Alan walks off as Hal looks over at you his heart was breaking into a million pieces.

================

You pack a cute little basket of goodies for you and Hal’s special date. You couldn’t wait to enjoy a nice day on the lake with him. You smile seeing Hal standing on the porch.

“Hal!” You rush to his arms. As Hal gives you a small sad smile. You stare in his eyes. As Hal takes a deep breath.

“Lady, there’s no easy way to say this…” Your heart stops were something wrong with Hal.

“Hal? Are you okay?” Hal sighs as he takes your hands.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You are kind and sweet and everything I wish I could have.” Your heart beats fast.

“I’m no good for you Lady, no good. You deserve a good honest man who has a real job who can provide for you. Not a mill and lumber yard worker. You deserve the world Lady and I can’t give you that. You belong here and I belong on the other side of the tracks. I’ll never forget the kindness and everything you’ve shown me and Mary.”

Your eyes are wet with tears as every word Hal says breaks you.

“Hal, I don’t want another man I want you, please just forget this nonsense and let’s enjoy our date.” Hal smiles and shakes his head.

“I’m afraid not my Lady, you belong with someone better.” He kisses your head as tears fall down your face.

“Hal… Don’t…” He shoots you a smile as he starts to walks off the porch.

“Can Mary still come and visit? She really loves you and your aunt.” You just nod as Hal smiles at you.

“You will find a great man one who deserves you, not some old dirty Tramp like me.” You try going after him, but Hal just shakes his head.

“You’ll always be my Little Lady I wish you all the happiness in the world.” He whispers as he walks down the sidewalk never looking back.

You find the porch swing and just collapse in it. You wipe your eyes as you think about everything. You didn’t want anyone but Hal. Why couldn’t he see that? Maybe he was just a wild soul who could never be tamed. But you thought what you two shared was real. Looking down as the tears hit your knees you cry.

“Goodbye, Hal.” You whisper.

==================

I’m strongly thinking a Part 2 if you’d like to see that let me know.

To be added to be my tags please send me an ask :)

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#MarvelGirl7's 700 Followers Celebration #Hal Carter #Hal Carter imagine #Hal Carter fanfic #Hal Carter X reader #Disney Hal Carter

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fiinalgiirls · 5 years ago

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GENERAL INFORMATION.

FULL NAME - genevieve sloane channing NICKNAMES - neve GENDER / PRONOUNS - she/her DATE OF BIRTH - february 12, 1988 PLACE OF BIRTH - portland, oregon CITIZENSHIP / ETHNICITY - united states american; irish, scottish, welsh RELIGION - atheist / agnostic SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS / POLITICAL AFFILIATION - grew up very low socioeconomic status in ne portland, before the gentrification, but is now considered middle class due to her nurse’s salary. she’s liberal. MARITAL STATUS - single ( previously engaged ). SEXUAL & ROMANTIC ORIENTATION - bisexual, leaning more towards an attraction to men. EDUCATION / OCCUPATION - bachelor’s of science in nursing; emergency nurse LANGUAGES - english, spanish, and a few small phrases pertaining to medical emergencies in vietnamese and russian.

FAMILY INFORMATION.

PARENTS - doug and paula channing, both deceased. SIBLINGS - none OFFSPRING - none PETS / OTHER - robocop ( a black and white siberian husky ). i’d also like her to get a cat at some point ! give me this plot point !! NOTABLE EXTENDED FAMILY - none

PHYSICAL INFORMATION.

FACECLAIM - adelaide kane HAIR COLOR / EYE COLOR - brown / brown HEIGHT / BUILD - 5′3″ / slight, athletic TATTOOS / PIERCINGS - nostril piercing, small tattoo on anterior right forearm. DISTINGUISHABLE FEATURES - a scar above her left ear that goes into her hairline approximately three inches, bold, full brows. freckles. usually has bruised knees.

MEDICAL INFORMATION.

MEDICAL HISTORY - laceration to left temporoparietal area, sprained ankle, fractured collar bone, well-controlled asthma. KNOWN ALLERGIES - penicillin, watermelon VISUAL IMPAIRMENT / HEARING IMPAIRMENT - nearsighted, but usually uses contacts; tinnitus. NICOTINE USE / DRUG USE / ALCOHOL USE - occasional alcohol use, former smoker ( has had an errant cigarette on occasion ), drug use as a teenager.

PERSONALITY.

TRAITS - compassionate, resilient, tenacious ; self-righteous, cynical, aloof TROPES - nerves of steel, canine companion, good is not soft, deadpan snarker. TEMPERAMENT - melancholic ALIGNMENT - chaotic good CELTIC TREE ZODIAC - rowan, the thinker MBTI - infj HOGWARTS HOUSE - ravenclaw VICE / VIRTUE - pride ; liberality LIKES / DISLIKES: animals, reading, running and weight lifting, not having to share her popcorn, take-out, breakfast for dinner, leather / denim jackets, white sneakers, fresh cut flowers, solitude, people who think about others, / medical dramas, arrogance, science deniers, bok choy, people who talk to her at the gym or when she has headphones on, movie remakes, passive aggression. QUOTE: ❝take a body, dump it, drive. take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. all your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. take only what you need. ❞

FAVORITES.

FOOD - curry. DRINK - coffee. PIZZA TOPPING - pineapple ( yes, she’s that bitch ), but with olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, and tabasco. COLOR - earth tones, grey, black and white. MUSIC - synth, hip hop, indie. BOOKS - horror, true crime, historical philosophy of science and medicine. MOVIES - the thing, nightbreed, notorious CURSE WORD - fuck, goddamn it. SCENTS - lavender, vanilla, chocolate.

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: murder, death, graphic violence, mental health, postpartum depression, suicide, cancer, drug mention, parent death, medical, euthanasia mention, stalking, guns

THE FOG CREEPS IN ; GIRLHOOD IS A GRAVEYARD

genevieve channing is born on a cold, grey february sometime around midnight to douglas and paula channing while the heavy oregon fog kisses the modest concrete jungle of portland oregon like a phantom. paula gives her a big name, telling the nurses with heady confidence that she’ll be famous one day, and it’s the biggest gift she ever gives her. baby genevieve is in her arms so often, she hardly touches a cradle, but it’s not long until douglas feels an uneasiness creeping in.

paula is bohemian silk skirts and crushed velvet. she grows restless being trapped in the plain, modest home in northeast. she is a woman that is easy to fall in love with—not meant to sit at home idly with a collicy baby, where she finds herself in tears more than ever. douglas returns from work to find baby genevieve screaming unattended in her crib while paula cries in the backyard with an ashtray full of cigarettes. she tells him she’s worried she’ll crash the car one day on the way to the grocery store with them both inside. douglas digs his teeth into his bottom lip and tries not to cry. he squeezes her hand and tells her she needs to go to therapy. what he really wants to tell her is that their baby needs her. he leaves paula outside and spends the afternoon tidying the house with genevieve swaddled against his chest. it’s a warm feeling.

it’s not long after that paula starts disappearing for periods of time and douglas learns she can’t be trusted to watch after the baby on her own. when she calls from downtown in tears, hyperverbal and desperate, he picks her up in his old chevy truck and brings her home. she agrees to see a doctor and for awhile, they figure out how to live again. some days are even as sweet as the rhubarb pies she starts to make again.

there are only two ways neve later remembers her mother, and the first is lovely–paula is picnics and shakespeare in the parks. she’s dried roses in the window and salmon tacos with mango salsa. she is whirlwind adventures and laughter. she teaches neve to make wishes on stray eyelashes, blowing them into the wind like dandelion seeds. on the good days, paula’s eyes are filled with stars. on the bad days, they are left black as the night sky while she cries the constellations down her cheeks. occasionally, she is cruel. mostly, she is absent.

by the third grade, neve expects this. douglas has never been much of a cook–save hamburger patties with canned green beans and a baked potato. she cooks their dinners from recipes she learns from her grandmas and helps around the house. most nights she’s home alone until the grumbling sound of the chevy breaks through the dark and signals her father’s return. eventually, she stops missing her mother from the everyday–it’s only when the other kids talk about their moms that she feels the pang of loss and wonders where she is. some nights neve finds herself sitting in her bedroom window pulling out eyelashes just to have something left to wish on. some of paula’s friends overdose on heroin or get murdered in the nights when neve is sleeping; she stays up late and hopes that her vigil will keep a distant mother safe.

there aren’t many trees on their street–unlike some of the other neighborhoods. the big weeping birch in their backyard that drives her father crazy as he rakes leaves every fall is neve’s pride and joy. there is comfort in the shade its branches cast every summer. at night it makes her lonely as it blocks the silhouette of the waxing moon. on lazy summer days when her father leaves for work, neve sits with her back curved against its rough trunk and reads the day away.

on a cool april afternoon, just after preparing a plate of cherry poptarts with a thin layer of butter on top of the frosting ( much to her father’s chagrin ), neve ventures out to the modest yard to sit under her tree. the familiar crushed blue velvet of her mother’s favorite dress catches her off guard and she drops her breakfast onto the unkempt lawn as her mind makes sense of the unnatural height of its hem as paula swings–marking the time of neve’s pounding heartbeat. the butter solidifies as it cools in the dirt, the heel of neve’s hand-me-down airwalk sneakers mashing her breakfast. the cherry filling sticks to the sole like bubblegum; she’ll never eat them again, but she can’t help but recall that her mom always preferred the maple and brown sugar.

THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST HER ; A GIRL LEARNS TO COUNT CARDS

portland in the eighties and nineties is less portlandia and more drugstore cowboy. a lot of kids from other neighborhoods don’t go downtown. the ones that do have an air of palpable grit. neve takes the max, rides her skateboard in the dark. douglas has cautioned her a hundred thousand times, but paula’s death has instilled such a great fear of losing his daughter that he lets her get away with more than he knows he probably should. he fears paula’s ghost will someday possess her and she’ll wander off into the ether. most days he insists that the only parts of paula he sees in his cherished daughter are the good ones–neve holds onto the corporeal world with claws. it’s only on the worst nights–paula’s specter cooling the sheets of his bed in the dark–that he wakes up with the fear his daughter is gone.

douglas’s new wife, rosie, does her best to pit them against one another, but sometimes–she’s not so bad, neve thinks. it’s nice to have a mother figure in the house again even if she falls short most days. sometimes she thinks that maybe they could learn to love each other. if nothing else, she’s sure she owes a bit of gratitude to the woman; the nights of her father’s haunting sobs have become fewer and farther between. it isn’t until douglas begins receiving late notices on utilities that he begins to grow suspicious. rosie is quick to throw neve under the bus–a young girl like that? she’s probably stealing their money to spend on drugs and CDs at sam goody. douglas has never bet on anyone like he bets on his daughter; rosie’s gambling debts are news to them both.

the fallout of the relationship leaves douglas and neve in dire financial straits. the father is heartbroken–another love lost, he blames himself for always choosing the wrong lady luck. despite their financial ruin, left in rosie’s wake, douglas has a hard time getting out of bed most days and blows through what little sick time he has available to him. school takes a back burner and neve barely attends it at all–favoring her time on finding work ( legitimate and illegitimate ) to help keep their small family afloat. she attends class when it’s profitable and waits tables or washes dishes when she can. it’s still not enough.

a few kids turn neve onto small crimes to turn a profit. they ride the max to the suburbs and crash parties–stealing pills out of medicine cabinets and turning them over for profit. calculus wasn’t worth a good goddamn, but distribution teaches skills. it’s hard not to get caught up in petty thefts and the occasional break-ins. neve and her friends find it easy to justify in the spirit of class war. a pin on her denim jacket reads ‘eat the rich’ and it doesn’t sound so bad. portland is a cannibal and it eats its children.

neve is a cat with nine lives and despite her friends being caught by the long arm of the law or the stronger arm of revenge, she evades detection. even such cats live with a fear of death, and as consequence catches up to members of the small circle she runs with, neve knows she is living on borrowed time. sooner or later, she knows, her luck will run bone dry.

SPRING RETURNS TO PORTLAND ; THE FROST CLINGS TO FRAGILE BONES

neve dropping out of high school is a wake up call for douglas. he sees farther than she does and knows that she deserves a better life than the one he’s scrounged together for her. most days, he blames himself for a life that could have been; some kids like her wore neatly pressed dresses and folded over lace socks on picture day. some kids had piano lessons and summer camps. there’s a lot of insight in hindsight, but neve staunchly opposes his masochistic remorse and becomes determined to prove him wrong. it takes her a couple years of working to figure out what she wants to do–a girl baptised in her mother’s blood is born with the kind of heart that takes on too much. she is meant for saving lives and carrying the world on her shoulders like atlas himself.

it takes time, but as douglas gets their house in order and starts working again. neve is able to start up at portland community college. she takes up a work study job and works a steady flow of odd jobs on the side to support herself. lady luck shines her fortune on the pair for the first time in forever to make up for the steady losses they’ve sustained over the years. life isn’t lavender and gardenias, but somehow waking up becomes little and less painful each day. some days neve wakes up and forgets that she can’t breathe. most days she spends her gratitude in the heap of debt the world owes her–waiting for the other shoe to drop.

the rebirth of their family is a hearty soil; both channings flourish as if made anew. the dew drops that cling to garden spider webs in their window signal the looming anniversary of a mother’s misty breath and neve learns not to fall apart. douglas works hard to do right by her and make up for the years of never knowing what to do and waffling between what is best and what is desirable. he is a man that longs for dreams–feet barely brushing the earth like her mother’s did on that day–but he is learning to make dreams work too. his dreams take root around his daughter once more; he builds them around her and builds her up with them.

the highschool dropout graduates her community college adn bridge program and she can hardly believe it when she’s accepted to ohsu for her bsn. there are no college diplomas with the channing name hanging on walls with peeling wallpaper or tucked away in trunks with paula’s things. douglas has saved his money for months to get her the right graduation gift and neve laughs, downplaying that it’s not a real graduation, but still walks in the ceremony at his insistence.

she returns home to the small party of friends she’ll start to grow apart from when she gets tired of the jeers about how she thinks she’s ‘too good for them’ now. neighborhoods like hers don’t always love to watch you grow if it means you’ll leave them. they’ll still blow up her phone for medical advice, but the invitations dry up like the drought of portland natives in southeast. for now, it’s a pleasant barbecue. the highlight of the evening comes in the small bundle of inky fur that douglas proudly produces after neve’s second burger. peering out from his strong arms are the brown eyes of a young siberian husky. douglas begs her to name the pup murphy over robocop, but loses easily–a hearty chuckle on his lips. they are bonded instantly–girl and dog–robocop becomes neve’s second most stalwart companion next to her father.

nursing school is hard, but it’s not impossible and it is full of new kinds of joys. she makes new friends and they eat lunch from the thai foodcart—nestled within the pod of south waterfront—and lay on the quad drinking smoothies and complaining about the next pharmacology exam. nose in a book and a drink in her hand at happy hour down at cha cha cha !, neve attracts the attention of pa student shane stone. he knows a nursing school classmate of hers from high school and is quickly incorporated to their study groups with a couple of his friends. he is tall with dark hair and kind eyes and just the sort of person a girl dreams of falling in love with. he spends little time worrying about things like rent and bus passes. it’s not even the end of the semester before study dates evolve into movie dates. there’s an entire world between them, but somehow the pair build a bridge.

DEATH RATTLES AND DYING BREATH ; THE GIRL’S OTHER SHOE DROPS

as neve focuses on school, douglas seems to be making steps to keep himself around longer. they go for long walks with robocop around the neighborhood. southeast portland is becoming a different neighborhood and the cost of living is high. restaurants crop up with around the block waits and family friends are forced to move to grayer pastures. it seems, to the channings, that it’s the end of an era. with neve spending most of her time at shane’s apartment on south waterfront, douglas’ weight loss is hardly noticed–everyone assumes it is merely the byproduct of increased activity. it isn’t until his stature becomes gaunt that neve starts to worry.

shane holds neve close when she finally breaks down–sneaking into the single bathroom of the clinic to let her fall apart the way he knows she can’t do in the open. like a wild animal, the girl he loves hides herself away when she feels death’s acrid breath on her neck. he doesn’t know what loss is and he certainly can’t relate to what she’s been through. douglas’ diagnosis is like watching the noose tighten around her mother’s neck all over again. her throat is dry like she’s choking on the fibers of that same rope; the world has a foggy edge—hollow like street lights illuminating an empty suburban neighborhood on a clear, dark night. everything is wooden; everything feels like a dollhouse.

it’s hard to keep up on her studies, but somehow neve muscles through. shane gives up his idyllic apartment and moves into their modest southeast home to help out. he makes a lighthearted joke about finally being a real portlander and moving so near the trendy, revitalized mississippi neighborhood and neve drops and breaks her coffee mug on the unfinished wood floor of the kitchen. it’s just another reminder that he doesn’t belong in her world any more than she does in his. it doesn’t sting as bad as the ink on his mother’s checks that she cashes to keep her father comfortable on his deathbed while she learns to be a better caretaker. life ebbs and flows, but douglas’ drains away until she hardly recognizes the sinewy, pale hands that hold hers so strongly for a man that can’t sit up by himself any longer. she curses her mother once more for leaving and twice for never having been there in the first place.

death isn’t slow or peaceful like the woman from her father’s church will lie about at the funeral. his death rattle lasts for hours and the bellows of his chest quake with weary breath. part of her wishes that the hospice nurse had started an iv on him and a sick, hidden part of her wishes it because a sweet dose of morphine would’ve ended it all sooner for him. she wonders silently if that would do more to ease his pain or hers? he hasn’t been conscious in two days. shane sits with her at the side of his bed with rapt attention and as his breathing slows, neve crawls into the hospice bed next to him. the next several months are a blur and a father misses his only daughter’s graduation. neve is barely present there herself.

shane insists that she’s not an orphan–his parents fly in from denver and treat her like one of their own. it guilts her that she can’t help but resent them for the simple virtue of living while her own father is reduced to a cold dust. she wears his ashes around her neck in a pendant from the funeral home and spreads the rest in every beautiful place she can find. some of them spill into her purse during a hike with robo and shane and she breaks down in tears. there are so many small things that make her sick or numb. a multitude of tiny memories that weigh as much as planets; isn’t dust what helped create the milky way? even around the stone family she feels alone. maybe especially around the stones.

HACKLES RAISED, A GIRL LEARNS THE DANGERS OF BEING FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

the emergency department attracts all kinds of people in myriad dire straits. people come in at the end of their ropes–infections ignored too long, stabbings and shootings, a broken bone from slipping off the slide, and sometimes when they feel like they can’t live any longer. evan does not fit into any of these categories when he comes in. among the myriad failings of the medical system, lack of access and use of primary care is one of the larger contributions to higher emergency department volumes and evan is another data point in a sea of statistics. he comes back to neve’s room with a sly grin plastered on his face and states that he’s new to the area and can’t get into a new primary care for a few months. his daily asthma inhaler is out and he needs to renew the prescription and get a referral to a clinic.

there’s nothing on the surface that identifies this man as a threat. he’s almost charming and he’s nontoxic appearing–a nice easy patient in a sea of sick people is sometimes a great relief. they make some small talk and it’s the usual stuff she chats about with patients: ‘where’re you from?’ ‘where did you go to school?’ he expresses an interest in nursing and she recommends the program she attended at the hospital she now works. there’s almost a tension there, and when he makes a casual comment about the tan line on her finger she tells him that she doesn’t wear her engagement ring at work because it can tear the gloves. that’s only half right. maybe he can sense the rest of the truth; she’ll wonder that later when she pieces together every scrap of something she can use to blame it on herself.

he sends her a message on facebook, which makes her lips curl downwards in uncertainty. even that isn’t entirely alarming. it opens up reminding her that he’s knew to the area, and that he’s interested in the nursing program she went to. it’s a surprise, but he makes mention of a girlfriend’s wifi and he even asks how shane is doing. he loves her dog and mentions wanting one himself. sure, it’s a little weird–unconventional–but neve has always been interested in helping others find nursing and agrees to meet him for coffee to discuss the program. when they meet, she sees the mistake inherit in it before she even opens the cafe door. he’s disheveled and hyperverbal when he speaks to her and she can barely get a word in edge wise. between the gift he’s brought her and the intensity of his stare, she wonders how she could have read him so wrong. it’s then that he drops the bomb that makes her stomach sink into the trench it detonates in–will they take him in the nursing program with a record? she doesn’t ask, but he provides the details anyway. death threats to some girl he barely knew that wouldn’t leave him alone, he paints the canvas well, but she can read between the lines. evan stevens is dangerous and his lethal eye is trained on her.

she makes an excuse to leave–the first of many excuses, the illusion of being unavailable, unattainable. it’s the advice she’s given to women before, but never had to follow. those words offered to women in distress seem so trite now, so hollow. there is so much fear in cutting ties slowly–the strategic approach to keep an impulsive person like that from escalating. she wishes she could take those clinical offerings of textbook wisdom back from those women and hold their hands. she wonders how many of them still live. he starts blowing up her phone constantly. he comments on all her social media. all day and all night. if she doesn’t respond, he threatens suicide. some days he asks if she’s working and says he brought her lunch. if she says she’s sick, he asks for her address to bring her tom yum takeout from the restaurant she’s posted about on instagram. everything makes her sick now.

A FINAL GIRL IS FORGED ALONE ; THERE IS NO SUBVERTING FATE

god, it’s hard to speak about. she can’t even let the words reach her tongue, lips and teeth to birth them. they shrivel and die in her throat, festering there until she swallows them and they rest in her stomach like great stones. she wonders if evan will cut her stomach open like a wolf and find the rocks there. that’s not how the story goes; she tells herself so many versions as she lies awake in the dark afraid to sleep.

when she finally tells her friends–a smattering of girls and guys from nursing school, the er, and her neighborhood–the response is like the knife she dreams about in her gut. she shows some of the girls at her work his picture, worried that he’ll come in asking about her. she’s chided by these friends, “he’s actually pretty cute, florence nightingale” they joke. “it must be flattering to have the attention.” even shane suspected that there’s some indulgence on her part. that maybe she likes trying to fix people who are broken so much that she gets some sick reward from the experience. he doesn’t speak the words, but neve is fluent in shane stone. he says it in his eyes, the downcurve of his lips, the tense way he sighs when her phone dings over and over again during date nights.

on a cold night in december, neve works on meal prepping alone in the kitchen. evan has been out of town helping his mother remodel her kitchen and neve feels like she can finally breathe in the space he’s left behind. turning on the wireless speaker, she tries to pair her phone to play music as loud as the thin walls of her father’s modest northeast portland home will allow and instead hears, in the cold, robotic voice ‘pairing with neve’s iphone and evan’s iphone.’ robocop doesn’t even lift his head in suspicion the whole night. she calls 911, but they find neither hide nor hair of him. in the morning, neve nails the windows shut and buys a gun–a smith & wesson .357 snub nose revolver. the weight of it is heavy in her hands and she buys a membership to a gun range, calling into work and practicing until shane returns. she doesn’t tell him about the gun and she stops telling him how bad things have gotten with evan. the click of his tongue and disapproval in his eyes is more dooming than a death sentence and she can’t bear to bring further disappointment. neve channing is a strong woman–a smart woman. things like this don’t happen to women like her.

somehow, evan is everywhere and he knows all her secret places as if he exists as an extension of her. maybe he even believes he is–sending her voice messages about how they’re connected. they are the same; they are foils of one another. he send her a picture of his ouroboros tattoo from a new number after she finally blocks him. ‘we are the same.’ he is an all-consuming, devouring force, but she is not a serpent’s tail. he is moloch–besmeared with blood, the great, horrid king–but she is not a child and she will not be sacrificed for sins she has not committed. he has not right and there’s only one way she can see this ending as the days grow longer. like life itself begins, this too will end in blood.

LOVE IS A HARD KNIFE ; A GIRL CAN’T STOMACH AMBROSIA

there is a consequence to every action and every inaction. every little thing she chooses not to tell shane fester and boils. the late nights at work and the new passcode on her phone seem more to shane like cheating than a worsening of some creep’s obsession. she hasn’t even mentioned evan to him since the trees started blooming again. when he elects to cheer her up and bring her lunch during a shift she traded so she could practice at the gun range, his suspicions deepen and while she sleeps that morning, he rifles through her work bag and finds alongside her locked cell phone the cold steel of a secret that he cannot abide by.

it’s not his fault either and she means that from the bottom of her heart. every kindness from the stones feels like another debt and neve can’t help but let the resentment fester in the tasteful diamond on her finger. when she looks upon his face now all she can see is death and it’s the world’s cruelest joke, because she’s the one with cemetery dirt underneath her fingernails. she can’t tell which of the two of them she resents more and they both deserve lives where ghosts stay buried and the dead don’t whisper malcontent in her ears while she struggles to fall asleep. nightmares are her own warm milk; she’s sick of the cold metal of a gun as she moves it from her night stand to her purse each morning. she’s tired of being made to feel like she had a stake in any of this.

it’s not the kindest way to leave a man, but she’s not sure she’s ready to face him again after all that’s happened. she leaves her house keys with her cousin paloma and packs up shane’s stuff. paloma has just started nursing school and can use neve’s father’s old house to sublet. the rent’s free and she’s always been gentle hearted. neve can’t think of anyone better to care for her father’s old house. with dear john letters to both shane and the hospital, neve takes robocop and enough of her things to fit into her subaru forester. it’s not goodbye. it’s never goodbye, she thinks as she hugs paloma on the modest porch. it still feels so permanent, but neve tells herself that big decisions always do. she yearns to discover who she is outside of grief and fear and love. a daughter cannot bloom in her parents’ shadows and she is suffocating underneath the gentle love of the mourning glory.

on the road without a real plan–because if she doesn’t know where she’s going, then neither does evan–neve signs on for a travel nursing company. the first assignment she considers is salem hospital an hour south and it’s a great department, but it’s too close to home. he’ll find her there easily. st. charles in bend isn’t far enough away either. it doesn’t feel like enough of a difference and none of them do until she’s cruising down the interstate through blythe, california and she sees a listing for a level one trauma center in tuscon, arizona. it feels like it could be the right place to burn and be born again.

A GIRL AND HER DOG; SOMETIMES PEACE IS ITS OWN KIND OF PRISON

the cool steel of the snub nose .357 revolver lies buried beneath her registration and owner’s manual in the glove compartment. she wonders briefly as she pulls out her sunglasses and slips a salty french fry into her mouth. the car stereo fades in and out along the southbound highway, switching between some smooth-talking radio host and the tinny crooning of buddy holly. it makes her think of her father, and she blinks back tears–plugging in her iphone to switch to a tune that doesn’t bring back such painful memories. robocop whines in the backseat and neve discovers that her maps aren’t loading any longer, the gps unable to locate their vehicle.

there’s no sense in pulling over and pulling out the map of arizona she purchased from a disinterested teen in the first gas station she’d come across in the state. there’s only two days before the job starts and, according to her recruiter, they’d already moved the orientation up a day, cutting her time to adjust to her new ( temporary ) place before work in half. taking a long drink of coffee–now as cold as her french fries–she blinks hard to keep awake and just when she thinks she’ll have to pull over and sleep in her car huddled close to robocop’s warm, furry body.

neve passes a hospital on the outskirts of town–lit up all pretty against the dark desert sky. it looks nice enough and the longer she drives, the more she considers that her recruiter might’ve told her they were full up in tuscon. maybe that was why they moved the date up for orientation afterall. in the dark august night, most of the businesses are closed and the lights in the mobile home park neve passes are off. the first place she sees open is bj’s food mart and she stops to get a fresh cup of coffee and stretch her legs. she learns inside that amen county is always hiring and leaves with a smile on her lips.

neve has spent nine peaceful months in boot hill. the gun no longer lives shoved into the bottom of her work bag or nestled into the glove compartment of her subaru. now it spends its days in solitude in the coffin-like drawer of her bedside table. evan will never find this place, she is almost sure of it. he might be looking for her, but he’s not looking for boot hill. some evenings on her long strolls to work, she smiles and closes her eyes–listening to the soothing sounds of the town.

soon enough, neve is sure there really was no travel assignment to reach. or, if there had been, she can’t remember where it’s at. instead, she takes some time to enjoy the small town and the anonymity she feels there. she’s not even living out of the silk bonnet hotel anymore. she hadn’t seen boot hill on any map during her road trip and, if that’s universal, her past can’t find her without a destination to set its sights on. there is more than great comfort in that. by the end of her first month, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

the emergency department is not the bustling trauma center she was used to, but there is an appeal to the autonomy rural medicine offers an experienced nurse. hell, in some places the doctors only come in if you call them. neve can’t exactly remember the application and interview process anymore. it seems like there are so many things that have become mysteries and she can’t find herself caring enough to investigate them long enough to follow an actual lead. it seems like she’s always worked there–an instantaneous sensation of home. she couldn’t even leave if she wanted to.

#neve.#⚕ ━━━ VISAGE ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ CHARACTER STUDY ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ AESTHETIC ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ SOUNDTRACK ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ THREADS ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ CONNECTIONS ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ WANTED ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ RESOURCES ჻ neve channing.#⚕ ━━━ WARDROBE ჻ neve channing.

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carndriverrecords · 5 years ago

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First Blog Post 3/20/20

Started CnD Records today. Feels Good.

Working on some diss tracks. Not sure if they see it coming - doesn’t matter either way.

Planning to release Car and Driver first real record this Friday 3/20/20. Driving Test Driver Fest 1.

Self release first record - another 20 tracks next week. Compile top 10 - 15 for first release with other label - thinking Terrible, Kranky, blu ish label or Thrill Jockey. Citrus City a no-go for now. Maybe just keep building CnD records.

Be the middle man - take advantage of opportunities without sacrificing my bands’ (and those I represent) integrity.

Reach sleep destroyer.

Last night at Ted’s - great DJ set. Kidz bop remixes, Fancy. Crowd hated it. Ted disappointed we had to leave but it’s ok with everyone. Tall guy took aux right out of computer, have video. Started dancing - cucked everyone. Everyone thinks they’re the crazy charismatic guy. Am I actually? I think so. Syd thinks so.

CnD Fest 2 , 3 , 4 at Purchase and beyond. Would like to play apartments, Scully’s den in BK (reach out) and Philly, DC etc.

Next voice memo album - 20 - 25 tracks right now. Better than the first. Danny said best album ever.

Working on “My oh Maia Reason Why” video - my favorite video I’ve ever seen. Getting good feedback.

Important to collab with certain SUNY people before I go:

Members of Lip Critic, Dawson, Neal, Gabe.

Send stuff back and forth with Joseph Kress.

Need to write song about not sharing a stage w unstable Car and Driver - cost me 2 gigs. Ok because I had the police interaction that night.

Things have been working out quite well. Syd is keeping me in check. Main priorities are keep the energy going while I can and make sure everyone around me is comfortable with me doing my thing, specifically mom, sofia.

Going to Only Angels tomorrow to collab with Alex.

Tues/Wed in RI with Zach Gorton. Need to see Nick Holcomb, Sofia, Will Orchard if he’s around. Riley in Boston? Would love to.

Visit Dad soon on the way to Richmond, in a few weeks perhaps. Grandma Roberta etc. They have a BBQ place now - I bet it’s great.

Follow up in the morning (3 hours from now) with wedding band, Kevin Daniels, drummer etc.

Film sunrise sessions at Purchase: My Ride’s Here, Splendid Isolation, Keep me in your heart, Studebaker, Cat’s in the Cradle, Everybody that you know. Don’t think twice, Boots of Spanish Leather, Someday my Prince, Teenage Dirtbag, Arthur (Woof Woof), Forget You, Signed Sealed Delivered, Superstition, The Promise, Hold me now (TT), Love on Top, Townes Van Zandt, 1-800 superstar, Evan Wright, Tom Petty, Blinded By the Light, Searching for a Heart, Mag Field’s, Barenaked Ladies, TMBG, Dolly Parton one sided love, Byrds, Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Parquet Courts, T Swift (Red, Way I loved you), Mitski, Sasami, Anything Could Happen, Beach House, He Needs Me, These Days, YLT, Beach Boys, Big Star Take Care, G500/Luna, Felt, Psychic TV, Shelia, BJM, Yellow Sarong, Over and Over, Hazel St, Heatherwood, Helicopter, He Would’ve Laughted, I wanna be your lover, The pump, Good enough (sleep destroyer), Them airs, BH (14, indian summer), help me scrape mucus off my brain), Beach Comber, DO YOUR THING, Icehead, Bobby, 1000 times, WIll Orchard, Bon Iver, MGMT, Tame impala, Instant Crush, etc. Art Vandelay, Quick Canal, Stereolab, Grouper, Broadcast, Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Bachelor Kisses, Cranberries, Cure, Pastels, MBV, I found a reason, pale blue eyes, Deerhoof, Gretel Alex G, Dancing w tears in my eyes, Elvis Costello, No age(things i did), Are ya ok, Maus, Ariel, R Stevie, Aphex Twin, Zomes, Vampire Weekend etc.

Bring Laptop for Beats on some and lyrics for all.

Love life more than ever before. Music feels so good. Want to help, make amends, everything that moondog did. Don’t be homeless much longer.

Not sure if I like throbbing gristle - definitely like Psychic TV.

How savage should diss tracks be? Very? Match the severity of the person’s treatment of me/others. Aka - pretty bad for all except for Auto.

Listened to new Kanye today - 10x better and more influential than death grips.

Realized today that i’ve spent my whole life wishing I was Kanye and now I am Kanye. Feels very good.

Everyone is gifted but internet makes us angst.

I am mostly Camus right now - maybe more Kierkegaard soon. Religion and Terrence Malik. Still need to read books.

Order of Books: The graduate Portrait of the artist Consider Lobster Infinite Jest Pynchon Ulysses (At recommendation of American gamer association)

Syd is incredibly gifted. Want to help her feel comfortable doing art/work here in the chaos but also sort out the chaos for both of ours’ sake. I thrive in it, she tolerates well. Want to move to Riverdale still, maybe East Williamsburg with Backpack Chris. We’ll see about money. Philly perhaps, little too far. Jersey is good location but bad commute. Bad to RI.

Visit RI and Boston Tues - Thurs. Sell Cigarettes at Concerts. Feels right.

Keep smoking for now - quit end of summer perhaps.

Don’t have Corona Virus - glad we are not quarantined. Still be smart. Don’t expose mom regardless. Protect at ALL costs.

Really though, why does Journee hate me? Write new track (Journee into forever nevermore not now not ever (Lou)) or Journee into SJW self righteous moral posturing (way too savage - maybe voice memo outro)

AR Kane album is incredible. Syd loves too. Sample everything.

Crazy - sound better at jazz than ever in my life. Exploring harmony - never practice. Teach free lessons all the time. Love the diminished scale. Might be best jazz guitarist to ever live. Time will tell. Would be cool long term. Prefer singing.

Getting good at piano too.

I’m my favorite lyricist/comedian/actor.

Is maia right, acting isn’t hard? Weird they can’t act.

^Remember to delete^

Don’t share this on Facebook yet.

Why does Journee hate me so much? Just the Louis CK joke?

People who stay home and do nothing hate to see irreverent people doing things.

People like when you’re losing - don’t like to see you win.

^That makes me sound crazy.

F00D outsider might make me famous first.

Need to keep up with legal situation.

Hope mom and dad both live long. Call Syd, get something nice for everyone in family. Get weird jewel cases. Order jewelry from etsy. Post merch on bandcamp.

Finish album art soon. Music videos. Get better at animation etc. Pay Ben for his poster. Actually really good. Maybe album art? Duo album! Record in Wisconsin, release under his name. WIll success be good for Ben? I think so. Still can’t believe Liv told him I wasn’t ok. Wow - good content for lyrics. You truly cannot write this.

How will people react to diss tracks? Extremely negatively. Or no reaction. We shall see. Maybe no real names in the titles...... only on Oh my. 4 names in titles is too many. Don’t release Auto track. Maybe on Voice Memos.

Track List: Good God Bed Head Rosa Reprise Oh My House Pop 1 skydive Pop 2 APhex GVO Pay 4 Take some Cherish Stars in F Are ya ok too bright Honeys Get to work Everybody That You Know Frost Bit BPC NYC New Age Heimet Helmet Deadbeat dads watermill for slitting bars romantic song david byrne Cinema study in cinema Brain ego Cherry doc marten Can’t liv w/o Venmo groceries Oh you like? Dancin DJ blues We are the State Farm robots Danny dorito is a dirty devito My funny valentine Zoomer blues The thing abt genres Blss Like minds ft dawson Lil toucha jazz Introducing car and driver The holy moment empire Ethics 101 - gma in the street Otto is sad I don’t know what it means! Operatic mellismatic Car and driver fest will be a success! Car and driver fest was a bust again! Cipha’s comedy corner Ryder Be gone evil atonal spirits!

Unreleased mental breakdown compilation ep:

I like all music! I’m a stupid pos Electric micro bike Get off your phone! John frusc Nice song Lap steel for 2 My masseuse advice Bed head wash sq Punchie John Maus yoyo interview Diminished kinda thing

Build the NYC scene, w Blu ish, Evan, 1 800, sweet joseph, Comics Club, Dawson, Sloppy Jane, Wheatus,

See Jack Fortin in NYC soon. Either my event or his.

Things are still good. Syd will be a great filmmaker. WIll maybe will end up with a dancer or a filmmaker - Probably not a musician. WIll have many loves.

Things are good right now - hope they stay that way.

Feel like Ezra Keonig - hopefully someone reads this one day and agrees. Different time in history and the internet - hope this is less cringe than Ezra’s blog , probably not. Ezra, if you’re reading this, sorry. See ya at Bernie’s rally.

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ironforgedrp · 5 years ago

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♛ BANNEN MORMONT

↳ details; male, thirty, b. 475AC (late) ↳ status; sexually unsure, single, no children ↳ faceclaim; kit harrington ↳ hails from; bear island ↳ loyalty; house mormont, house stark

↳ title; ruling lord of bear island ↳ religion; the old gods of the forest ↳ magical ability; semi-dormant skinchanger ↳ spoken languages; common tongue ↳ reason in sunspear; attending with the north

♛ PERSONALITY

↳ type; the commander (ENTJ-A) ↳ alignment; lawful neutral ↳ star sign; pisces ↳ positives; determined, steadfast, generous, unrelenting, loyal, open-minded ↳ negatives; harsh, hard-headed, serious, self-sabotaging, own worst enemy

♛ HISTORY

↳ family lineage.

the firstborn child of the mormont family, son of lord jeod and lady reylar, bannen, was born on a frozen night during a blizzard. bear island was a sheen of white for three weeks as the sickly infant struggled for life. however, he was tougher than the circumstances as most of their bloodline was, more so than his father gave him credit for. though he grew up small and pasty-skinned, his mother believed wholeheartedly that the old gods of the forest had saved him from the brink of death for a reason whilst his father pressured his wife for another male heir with the expectation that bannen would not live to see adulthood nor be a fit ruler for house mormont. unbeknownst to anyone, not even bannen himself as he grew, the weakness his body showed in early years was due to the appearance of magic in the veins of a mormont once more. bannen was born a skingchanger, and though he thought his dreams of bears meant nothing (the bear being his house sigil, living on bear island… it was not out of the ordinary at all) - but each night what was happening during those dreams, he was slipping into the body of a beast and returning to himself before he awoke. the only person he confided in was his younger sister when they were children, and they only referred to it as his ‘illness.’

despite having grown up stronger each year, having reached manhood and having nothing ailing him, lord mormont continuously berated his eldest son. the arrival of the second and last child of house mormont, cassana, served to be somewhat of a relief in a way as jeod focussed on training his daughter to be the heir that house mormont deserved. in amongst his childhood, bannen’s most present and pressing feeling was loneliness. he was stuck in his bed for the majority of his formative years, weakened into a paraplegic almost by his illness and the muscle atrophy that the lack of movement caused him. the keep or bear isle was an old structure of cold stone and wood, padded with furs and fireplaces to ward off cold, but the stone caused an echo that was nearly uncanny on a still night. by the time he was eight, he knew his father wished him dead no matter how much he pushed his intelligence and studies. lord jeod was unashamed and loud, and his voice carried so his eldest child grew used to hearing his father speak loudly about wishing to have bannen shipped to the wall, left out in the cold to be seized by the elements, have him sent to the citadel… anything to get his sickly, broken son out of the bloodline. despite his mothers love and his sisters companionship as they grew older (when jeod would let the siblings share time as he treated bannen as though he had a contagious disease.)

it was also thanks to the echoing of his lonesome home that he overheard information that would help him through his life in a very bittersweet way. a kindred spirit, and someone uniquely able to understand the angst that gripped him. he heard his father, drunk one night, carrying on about a rumour that the ‘mighty grey lion of the west had a broken child too’ and that it was ‘lucky that his broken one was a girl and not his heir.’ bannen had heard his father speak ill and hatred of him for many years, but the possibility of another child being like him seemed like a ray of hope to the lonely mormont heir. he initially wrote to, not the girls father for fear that he may be like bannen’s own, but the lady of house lannister. he never told who he truly was, as bannen was already a joke in his own little corner of the world, and instead claimed to have the last name 'snow’ though he told the truth about where he hailed. shortly then after, bannen began his pen-pal relationship with lysella of house lannister - a sad mirror of each others world in the north and south. for years to this day they corresponded, though it was only the past year that bannen revealed who he truly was: the heir and then lord of bear isle. in truth, save for his sister and cousin, bannen did not have friends unless they were through paper.

slowly as he reached manhood he was able to begin the rehabilitation he sorely desired, bannen never knew what it was that changed but he knew he couldn’t go on as broken bannen of house mormont. his father far favoured his sister and made no attempt to hide it as he groomed her to take over bear isle as though she was the only child he had sired. however it took several years until bannen found his future set on a serious and weighted turn, at the encouragement of his mother jeod finally allowed his son to come on a day hunting trip wherein bannen road alongside his father with trepidation but a determination to prove himself to his unflinching father. an hour into their trip and the small party of men were beset by rogue wildlings who had sailed across their shared sea - not wholly uncommon but still a shock - and before the mormont men could react, lord jeod mormont was wounded by a stray arrow, paralysing his right side and rendering him unable to wield his sword as he fell from his horse. bannen, however, had been relentlessly training with dual swords and bow and arrow to make up for all the time his father had dismissed him as less than. still a teenager but finally ambulant and strong in his body and mind, defended his father and the men who’d been injured - he rallying the able-bodied mormont men and slaughtering all but one of the wildlings who attacked them, who was questioned and then executed later that week.

despite the quick action, the gods had made their decision by the placement of the arrow in lord mormonts side. he was never able to us his right arm correctly again. he never gave bannen the respect he had craved, instead he berated him all the more for not stopping the arrow from landing, for not throwing himself into the path… nothing he did was good enough. bannen, by the time lord jeod was on his deathbed three years later, was one of the finest swordsmen on bear island, one of the most accurate shots with an arrow and highly intelligent. his fathers constant degrading of his character had forced him to push himself to reach his highest potential, and even then it was not good enough for bannen nor his father. suspected complications of the arrow wound and the paralysis it had caused, jeod died much younger than anyone expected and bannen became the unexpected and immediate ruling lord of bear island. still ingrained in him was the desperation to prove that he was good enough to be the steadfast leader of his house and family, he became more serious and grounded - quashing the reckless and happy-go-lucky side that his mother had so cherished in him.

for many years he continued to train with the master at arms to ensure he was thorough with both hands after what to his father, master of laws, of coin, their maester and poured over documents and books to make sure he knew all he needed. lord bannen mormont was intent on bettering himself no matter what: well read, ambidextrous and wielding the ancient valyrian steel ancestral sword ‘longclaw’ - he is defiantly and definitively proud of his house and lineage, has the utmost loyalty to his liege-lords house stark and will fight to his last breath to ensure his house remains powerful and respected, and to never repeat the sins of centuries past. his biggest downfall is the ongoing ghost and trauma that has followed him all his life, he cannot shake the words of his father. his mother encouraged him to find a wife, though bannen had never had the socialisation or really the relationships with anyone in order to begin searching for one. however, the first time in the capital at the summons of the crown held more shocks for bannen then he could have ever guessed.

his illness and migraines and violently disrupted sleep crept back up into his life, even causing him to collapse which resulted in the lord of house mormont needing a walking cane for a number of days. however, he recovered and floored everyone with his showing in the tourney of kings landing. the more shocking development was the strange relationship he made with the queen. the accidental reveal of lifelong secrets so similar gave him a strange sense of belonging and less loneliness. lysella had shared the fears of the body, the psychological scarring of a cruel father… but to find one other person who was cursed with a dream-sickness, the fears of the mind, in the queen of westeros was almost like a second slap from the gods. bannen knew he would never be able to speak freely or meet frequently: she was grounded in the south and he in the north, and neither would risk letting anything slip in a letter. he would continue studying into what could be afflicting the two - if it is even the same, and having the chance to meet with her again and discuss all his findings is another reason he is looking forward to the summit in dorne. there is much changing in his life at the moment, and it is a lot for a lord of a small island in the far north to comprehend.

↳ personality.

bannen, as person, is comprised of few things at his core. he is made of self-doubt and strength, and the desire to prove himself as a strong leader, and a strong man absolutely driving him to the point of self destruction. very much the title he assumed too young, he is the lord of bear island and the heir his father near beat into his head that he should have been; it has warped his personality into something that is still evolving to this day. bannen spends so much of his time trying to outrun his fathers ghost and he is ashamed of that, whatever energy he finds left within himself is split between his position as the head of house mormont and trying to keep his 'illness’ at bay.

↳ the splitting of the kingdoms.

due to the documented history of the disputes between house lannister and house stark, bannen is distrustful of them. as a loyal bannerman of the starks - he will always be wary of the lannisters and even more so now that they have once again ascended to the throne. having read the history books, he is well aware of the mad queen cersei lannister and what befell the northmen at her want. bannen is not fond of the south, he finds things too rich and precious for his tastes. he’s at home amongst the godswood, and with the smell of cool salty sea and damp earth from the rain.

after what has happened, bannen is of the opinion that in all the craziness that befell them at the behest of the lord of barrowton, the crown handled it fairly well. no one seemed to have seen it coming, not in the north nor south, and knowing that the crown worked to actively save his kin and execute edderion, as well as punish his kin, for his crimes has given bannen a strange sense of faith in the lannister reign. given his connection with the queen he has some surprising faith in her as a ruler also - he sees far too many similarities between them to think she would fail her people, which may be premature given he doesn’t know her very well save for his gut instinct.

he is attending dorne for the summit, despite his dislike for the heat, at the behest of the north and branden, who is now the warden of the north as a want to show power at the summit after the scandal of brandens uncle’s betrayal. he has many questions, and he is hoping to find some answers, finally, at the other end of westeros.

♛ STATUS: TAKEN.

#tee.#house mormont.#taken.#Taken Male.#male.#kit harrington fc #The North.#North.

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lifeofbouyd · 5 years ago

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12 Years Anniversary

Fred: Yow, da gyal deh nice eno bwoy. Mi ago circle har enz an try get di digits.

He walked away, heading straight towards her. Walking as if he was going to collect a trophy. She was nice, really nice, that I must admit. She’s one of the nicest girls I had seen in a long time. Her hair was well done, her nails freshly painted or at least so they seemed. Her face, done to perfection and her dress, looked expensive. It swung a little above her ankles and rested perfectly on her body. Outlining her killer shape. She had a gold ring on her “wedding” finger and stainless steel on her pinky. I watched them greet each other and what actually caught my eyes was, how much of a lady she was. She seemed well groomed and too good for my liking. A “goody two shoes” was my first thought. Girls like these are normally either married, rich, or have a rich man taking care of them. I smelled trouble, yet there was so much desire. I felt like she was worth having. Not just for a night, but someone I’d be with for a while. They exchanged numbers as I pulled that fairytale thought from my mind. I hexed that shit. I was already in a sinking ship, no land in sight. I’d rather drown on my sinking ship that jumps across on her boat.

Fred: Yuh see how di genna work youth. Ago fuck that quick eno. Yuh zimi.

I humored him, knowing he normally never pulls through with these kinds of chicks. I’ve seen it one too many times to think differently. Fred was good when it comes to picking up girls, but he’s always had me as his role model. I was lucky when it came to women. Always getting the “better-looking ones”. Most of which turned out to be faces without priorities. I’ve had to learn the hard way that not all glitters is gold. Sometimes they’re not even gold filled. Days passed and I had forgotten about her. He didn’t mention her and I never remember to ask. I guess when you have your hands full it’s hard to keep up with likes. I spotted her one day staring at, and from the looks of it, she had been staring for a while. Taking in my presence as if she wanted me to say hi. I hadn’t heard him mention her I a while but I still didn’t want to take his link like that. I learned later that day that she had no interest in men. She considered them a total waste of her time and feels she’s better off with girls. Now I shared her view. I love girls just as much as she does. I’ve always had a Fetish for lesbian. Clean girly lesbians that is. I’d never fuck a butch even if she paid me to. I imagined all the things she’d do to me, and all the things I’d do to them. Mostly what I’d do to her. I still didn’t say hi for a while. I wanted to build the suspense between us and make the first conversation memorable. I planned it down to the very last second, every possible outcome, and I always walked away with her number. Again, I caught her watching me. Paying keen attention to me from head to toe. I got my convo together, but by the time I turned around again, she was gone. I argued with myself for a while until I accepted the fact that I was moving too slow. Again I forgot about her. Living my best life. Caught up chasing other chicks I was brave enough to start a conversation with.

Someone pats me in the shoulder.

Her: Hi, I’m Rachel. Wasn’t sure when you were gonna say hi, or if you ever would so I decided to be the first to say hi.

I took a few seconds to inhale her cologne and pay keen attention to her Weldon’s face, her pussy cheeks spreading over her pants crotch crease. Her breast sticking me in the face, her slippers which seemed she got it from House of Style or some other expensive women clothing outlet.

Her: 🙃 You can say hi you know. I won’t bite, at least not yet. I wanna get to know you first.

I froze. My palms got sweaty and heart heated like a fifty caliber gun. Well, she did say she wouldn’t bite me. At least not yet. Obviously, she was interested in getting to know me. But why me though? Of all the guys she could have, if all the guys that had been chasing her, why get to know me? I entertained her conversation and played it cool. Acting like I didn’t want her. Our conversations started off slow with basic texts and friendly flirting. Somehow she killed my urge by saying she Christian. I don’t mind dating Christians, but what I don’t like is someone consistently reminding me. She tried to get me to see eye to eye with her beliefs, but I just wasn’t ready to take that journey. I only plan on getting married and baptized once and I don’t intend to do it for the wrong reasons. We stopped talking for a while because I had decided not to chase her. It was more like respecting her religion and not trying to get between her legs. We went from 2:00 am calls to every other day texting. It became somewhat of a long distance relationship or friendship or whatever it was. I had accepted the fact that I wasn’t gonna have her, at least not as easy as I thought. In my mind, she would give me her number and I’d take her home and make her scream my name. But reality..... mmm. Reality is a bitch.

Lucky for me, I saw her one evening when I was buying dinner at a famous Chinese food place. I offered to pay for her food however, she ended up paying for mine. Trying to show she’s independent I guess. We sat and chat for a while which made me realize we had a lot in common. She braced her body against mine for the first time when she was leaving. She whispered in my ear, “This could be all yours if you’re a good boy.” She sent chills down my spine and made my dick rock hard. She ran her hand across the front of my pants and smiled. I didn’t know if it was a good or a bad smile but I’m sure I could drill a wall with my shaft. I walked her to her stand where she laid a wet “chups” on my forehead. You know that trickling feeling you get when electricity runs through your body? That’s the effect she had on me. We sext all night, building curiosity between us two. She told me how she wanted to make me cum all over her and sanctify her with my rod. Now, I don’t like to count my eggs before they hatch, but I considered it a done deal. A few days passed and the fetish became a relationship. One I’ll always remember. The funny thing about it is, I had no plans whatsoever to be in any form of ships. But I was too far out in the sea by the time I realized what I had gotten into. To be honest, I really didn’t mind. Everything seemed ok. She said there was no husband, no boyfriend, no girlfriend or anyone of that nature, and she never gave me a reason to doubt her. Before I knew it I was in love. Head over heels kind of love. Shit. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. She had me hooked on her like a coke headed drunky. We moved from occasional hugging and texting to kissing and phone sex. I knew girls were horny but damn, she had no stop in her. It would seem she hadn’t been eating for a while and was just trying to take all she could get. I was down for that.

I invited her over one weekend with intentions of fixing her business. I cleaned the place from floor to ceiling and made it smell like a five-star resort. I even did a fancy spread on the bed to sell the look. White fluffy carpet on the floor and breathtaking scented candles lit on the wall. I loaded an Amazon video for her to watch while I took a shower. I came out in nothing but my towel on, trying to look super sexy for her. I popped us a bottle of Grey Goose and made my deluxe mix with a bottle of Rosè. A sweet, lingering, sparkling mix. Halfway between the first glass, she was already half naked, making herself at home. She turned the movie off and started playing sex songs. I watched her stretch and touched her toes before whining out her bra and underwear. Squeezing her nipples and biting her lips. Now I’ve seen a lot of fat pussy in my life, but she had something different. “Too bad you don’t eat”, she said with a smirk on her face. But even I did, I’m sure I’d suffocate somewhere there 😂. She pulled the towel off and reached for my dick. She gently stroked it as she ran her tongue up and down my leg. I couldn’t help but hold her head each time she moved. The sensation was unbearable. She then sat on top and slid her pussy back and forth the length of my cock, causing her to get super wet. Less than a minute or two she had already cum. “No condom, no love”, she said. Sliding her self back and forth on my dick. I slid my hand in the pillowcase and pulled out three packs of condoms. Scented, glow in the dark and ribbed. I slipped a ribbed on and made her ride herself to another orgasm before flipping her over on her back. I pulled her to the edge of the bed and beat her clit with my shaft. That shit made her squirt. Her pussy was gushing cum and I hadn’t even started beating it up yet. I slid my way inside her and stroked her slow and deep. Holding her neck with one hand while I held her leg with the other. Her eyes rolled back, she screamed my name, she vibrated, and vibrated, and vibrated again. All this cumin made her weak. I had her lap her legs around my waist and her hands around my neck. Standing upright, I held her waist and pulled her back and forth the length of my shaft, causing her to squirt like a broken wipe. She released her hand from around my neck and almost hit the floor. All that fun had made her weak. I braced her against the wall, high enough to give her the full length of my dick. I kissed and fucked and sucked her nipples until she begged me to cum. I spread her legs wide and struck her like lightning until I exploded. Again, she flooded me. Squirting so much the floor was soaked. She was so tired she fell asleep the moment I put her back on the bed. She was knocked the fuck out.

I had to drive her home that night. She was too tired to even bathe herself. We fucked several times after that and had many picnic dates which made me want her even more. Who does a picnic and have sex in the bushes? Before I knew what hit me we were inseparable. Living the life. #Relationshipgoals #Happylife #Bae. I had given in, putting my heart on the line. Expecting hers in return. I had it, I’m sure I did. God knows I had it. But like everything else in my life, that got fucked too. I remember being home one weekend, watching a movie and texting some chicks when my phone rang. A random 876 number. I don’t normally answer numbers I don’t know, but this person was calling a number very few people have. It must be pretty important. What if it’s work? What if it’s an x I haven’t seen in a while and would love to bang again. I missed the first call. I figured if it was important they’d call again. My other Jamaican number started ringing. To my surprise, it was the same number. Obviously, this person wanted something so I answered. I stayed mute and so did the caller. The call ran for like two minutes before the caller said hello.

Caller: Bouyd.... Hello, is this Bouyd?

Me: Who dis?

Caller: You don’t know me but I know you. I’m calling to warn you before you get too deep and something happens to you.

Me: What? Warn me? From who? Who’s this?

Caller: I’m Craig, Rachel’s man.

Me: Which Rachel?

Caller: The someone you tucked last week and dropped off after eleven.

Me: 😳🙄🤭😏🤤. I chuckled to myself for a few before responding. Oh, that Rachel, I know her pretty well. I see you know a lot.

Caller: Yes. I watched you follow her in and squeezed her ass at the door before leaving. I could have knocked you out but I chose not to.

Me: 😂🤣😳🤔 now this is serious. How could he possibly know this? Was he actually there? I bet this is a prank call. Breda, wa yuh want? Mi nuh run certain joke eno bad man. Talk fast or walk fast eno.

Caller: A loud mouth won’t help you son.

I hissed my teeth and ended the call. Who does he think he is? Calling me so late at night to talk about rubbish. At the same time, I was worried. He spoke facts. He knew exactly what I did. I did see a white car parked across the street that night that wasn’t normally there. He messaged me on WhatsApp to answer my phone. Like wtf? How did he even get my WhatsApp number? He called again and I answered. He explained who he was and how he fits in the big picture. He made me tea how long he’s been paying attention to my movements. He knew when we fucked, where we fucked, where we went on dates and even some stuff I’ve only told her. What stood out to me most was when he said, “I could have hurt you so many times but I chose not to because I figured she played you well. He sent me pictures to prove his speech and gave me very detailed information that he had acquired about over a few weeks. I didn’t know what to do. “Now that you know, it’s up to you to decide what you do from here.” He said good night and hung up.

Leaving me in suspense. A million questions ran through my messages be. How could she do this to me? How did a twelve years relationship fit in our four months of dating? Is that even possible? She never slipped up, she never gave me a reason to doubt her. She made me believe that I could have someone for me, myself and I. She made me open up and let her in. Shit 😔. Did I shit in a fucking church or something? Don’t I deserve to be happy without hiccups too. Sigh 😔. Where did I go wrong? Did I fall for her too quickly, did I put my basket where I can’t reach it, is this karma, did I hurt someone who God wants me to repent for? What do I say to her? Should I stay with her, is it safe. I thought with both my heads as I wanted to ensure I made the right decision. I loved her and I love fucking her, but is it worth my life? Would she die for me? What would she do if she was in my shoes? Do I even mention this to her? Sigh 😔. I stayed all night wondering if he had followed me home and was outside waiting for me to act us to ambush me 🤔. She called me several times but I didn’t answer. Could it be a test? What if he was using her phone to call me to see if I would answer? What if she was calling me to say it was a prank? I grew paranoid. He told me to be patient until I see her and I will see that everything he told me was true. So said so done. The new hair do courtesy of, the brand new phone and the marks on her neck. I wanted it to be a joke, I wanted her not to show up the way he said she would. I swallowed my heart that day. Tears ran down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop crying. Why was I crying though? It’s not like it’s first I’ve fucked a nigga’s chick. What was so special about her that I didn’t want to share? Then it hit me, it’s simply because I had fallen in love with an illusion she created. She had created me a photoshop life in 3D. I told her what happened and I told her how I felt. Shit, I even had the guts to say it was over.

She tried for weeks to explain that they were no longer together but I was beyond her white lies. She sent sexy pictures to make me miss fucking her, which I actually did. But I just couldn’t see past what happened. I guess I felt like I was cheated out the chance to choose to date her while she had someone. I would have felt a lot better if she had told me this from the start. I wouldn’t have had my expectations so high. She taught me a lesson that will part me through life. A woman knows what she wants and she knows just how to get it. Women don’t get caught cheating unless they want to get caught, and a woman will create the life she thinks you want to live.i could have lost my life, #Dead. To top it off she said I was ungrateful. She had put her life in jeopardy to be with me and I repaid her by breaking up with her and taking his side. But if she did that to him, what would she do to me? He had the house, the money, the car and I had nothing but a good old dick. I guess that’s what she wasn’t at home.

Life isn’t always about what you can offer. Everybody want vanity, but if they ain’t getting the amount of attention, sex or fun that they’re looking for; “bun” will be your best friend.

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a--world--apart--fic · 7 years ago

Text

A World Apart - Chapter Five

Notes: Grab a drink, this is a long chapter! We hope your loving it so far. Next week we head to the Beaumont Ball! Tagged long post for mobile readers.

Rating: M

Word Count: 6349

Musical Accompaniment: Ed Sheeran - Kiss Me

Tag List: @writtenbycandy, @hopefulmoonobject, @heatherfilliez, @theroyalweisme, @indiacater, @tmarie82, @enmchoices, @the-everlasting-dream, @diamond-dreamland, @lizeboredom, @drakewalkerwhipped, @youwontlikewherewewillgo, @mfackenthal, @kingliamthirst, @snyggflicka, @debramcg1106, @choicessa, @drakelover78, @starstruckzonkoperatorbat, @blackcatkita, @drakewalkerfantasy, @jadedpixiescribbles, @walkerismychoice, @walkerduchess, @hamulau, @simplyaiden-blog, @hhiggs, @drivenbyfantasy

Chapter Five ~ Written In the Stars May 1914

Olivia sits crossed at the ankles in her private box, enthralled by the tragedy unfolding on the stage below. The music swells, the dancers floating across the stage with grace as the swan princess takes her last breath in the arms of her lover, his failure to let her go, in spite of his betrayal of choosing another, killing them both. She’s always been fond of this particular ending to Swan Lake, for she has not believed in the foolish notion that love always endures since she was a child. Losing one’s self in love leaves you vulnerable; a victim blinded, like unwitting prey.

“What a lovely performance. Don’t you agree, Lady Olivia?” the irksome voice of Lord Henry breaks her from her trance as the curtain call begins.

“Lovely indeed,” she mutters, flicking his wandering hand off her thigh. Despite his unusually squirrelly voice, Lord Henry was one of the better suitors she had courted since her arrival in Paris in the winter. None so far were men she would entertain marrying, much to the dismay of dear Aunt Lucretia who surmised Olivia was driving away these noble men on purpose. Perhaps she was. Truthfully, she had no desire to marry. Still and all, she would, and without love, for after disgracing the house of Nevrakis in the spring of 1908, Aunt Lucretia decreed Olivia was not fit to choose a husband of her own free will.

Her aunt had no shortage of foreign suitors at her disposal, each ostensibly worse than the last. At Yuletide, Olivia kept company with Duke Moritz, a handsome man with an ego the size of all of France to compensate for his small cock. Aunt Lucretia was certain she had found her a match worthy of a Nevrakis, but Olivia would not stand for him. Horst from Düsseldorf followed, who lasted just an evening with those repulsive damp hands. In February, the Vicomte, a promising prospect lasting three weeks until Olivia tired of how unfailingly polite he was.

In March, Aunt Lucretia returned from America with David, a railway tycoon and an uncouth man who never put down his pipe and talked only of his business dealings. He lasted three dinners before Olivia poured her wine over his pipe and waltzed out unaccompanied. Days later, the tawdry Canadian emerged, a man who made his fortune in the Klondike and promised her weight in gold -- as if Olivia would deign to marry new money.

Lucretia’s quest for a gentleman for her to wed returned to Europe then, finding Markus Von Groot, a Dutchman she called “eccentric.” That was complete nonsense. He could only be described as mad, spending their afternoon at Musée du Louvre describing in immense detail how in his years as an artist he would fuck his muses and come into his paint so he could express a physical manifestation of the passion between artist and muse in his creations.

Olivia was so desperate to get away from him she walked willingly into the arms of Lord Henry of Cambridge, and has tolerated him since, not wanting to see what other dreadful men Aunt Lucretia had in the queue.

“Shall I have the car pulled around, or would you prefer we go for a stroll? It’s a delightful evening,” he suggests timidly. “The best view of the Eiffel Tower at night is nearby, if you wish, I could show it to you?”

Olivia visibly cringes at the thought of extending this night any longer than she has to. She notices him frown slightly and sighs, taking pity on him. “Very well, we’ll see the tower and then I really must return home.”

She begrudgingly accepts his arm as they leave the theatre, offering him a half smile that does not meet her eyes. “I’m having a wonderful time, Olivia. Paris has been kind to us on this fine spring night, don’t you agree?” No, you dull oaf -- She holds her tongue, reminding herself not to be rude, and nods briefly at him with pursed lips. She supposes he takes note of her sour mood, as he remains silent while they weave their way through the narrow streets, the only sound the echo of her heels on the cobblestone.

There is a crowd about when they arrive at the base of the Eiffel Tower, all tourists admiring the great structure. She has never understood what the appeal is, finding it ironic that a landmark made of cold, unforgiving steel remains the symbol for the city of love. Henry fumbles reaching for her hand and gingerly takes it in his own -- she leaves it limp in his grasp. She looks up at him from beneath her painted lashes and grimaces. He is nervous about something, sweating like a sinner in church.

“Olivia, if I may be so bold,” he begins and her eyes widen, not in surprise, but in horror as she notices a small box twirling about in his left hand. “I realize we have kept company for only a short time. Yet, I knew from the moment I gazed upon your breathtaking beauty that one day soon we would wed. You are a remarkable woman, and after seeking the permission of your Aunt Lucretia, there is something I would very much like to ask you.” Henry begins to lower himself to one knee and Olivia flushes in embarrassment -- her cheeks must be the colour of her crimson hair. “Get up, you idiot! Get up this instant,” she hisses through gritted teeth. “You’re embarrassing me, you lovesick halfwit! People are staring.”

“Darling,” he starts, but Olivia has hooked onto his coat and pulled him from the ground herself. “I thought this is what you wanted, Lady Olivia!”

“What possibly gave you the impression this is what I wanted? A distasteful, public proposal at the tackiest place in all Paris; this is preposterous, Lord Henry. I’m offended you think so little of me to believe that I would accept the proposal of a man I met just weeks ago. I insist you take me home. Consider it a kindness that I will forget this catastrophe ever happened.”

“Oh no no, this is all wrong,” Henry pouts, his bottom lip stuck out much like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. “Lucretia assured me if I proposed you would accept. You must accept, Lady Olivia! Please, accept.”

“Cease this wretched behavior immediately, Lord Henry. I’ve had quite enough for tonight. Take me home,” she snaps, losing her patience.

“You don’t understand, Lady Olivia! I must return to Lythikos with you. I can’t go back to mummy in England! She’ll be so disappointed if I return without a bride again. Save me from mummy, m’lady, I beg you!”

“You sniveling, pathetic sap,” another one bites the dust, “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. I’ll see myself home,” Olivia sneers in disgust and stalks away from him, leaving him calling after her.

She knows without doubt when she returns to her apartment she will be berated for her dismissal of yet another suitor. She grumbles grievances under her breath all the way back through Paris, raging at the circumstance of her noble birth and her blasted aunt’s insistence to find her a suitable match.

The streets are emptying when she finds herself passing the Opéra Garnier once more, and she stops, deciding she better hail a taxi if she is to get back before the riff raff come out in spades. She is standing waiting for a taxi to pass when two young dancers approach, lingering on the steps of the theatre. “Beautiful sky for stargazing, non? Cygnus shines bright tonight, fitting for the show,” the girl passes her colleague a cigarette, a cloud of smoke floating above their slim frames.

Olivia looks up and admires the stars glittering in the night sky, illuminating the darkness as the city begins to sleep. Cygnus, the swan -- how fitting indeed. She traces the constellation with her eyes, feeling a trace of nostalgia for simpler days when she would lie in the forests of Lythikos with Liam and he would tell her the great stories of the sky. After years of being away, she tires of Paris, and longs for the comforts of home.

A taxi finally passes, and just as she is about to climb in, she catches sight of a vaguely familiar face leaving the theatre. A petite brunette woman carefully perches a tutu on one arm, a bag of feathers thrown over her shoulder. She is dressed all in black like a Parisian, but carries herself far too meekly to be a true French woman. She descends the stairs and Olivia tilts her neck down to get a closer look -- Savannah? -- but it couldn’t be. She shakes the idea off as a trick of the light.

•••

Drake pretends not to notice the farmer’s daughters giggle and bat their eyelashes as he passes by. The eldest, Sarah, a short, pretty blonde with wavy hair and brown eyes, stands in the middle of her sisters, subtly pointing in his direction, undoubtedly bragging about their evening trysts. Sarah is a nice girl, and lovely company to allay the sting of lonely nights, but she is just another warm body; a surrogate for the only woman he wishes to fill his bed.

Sophia.

He has not seen her in a fortnight; not since she called upon him in the midnight hour drunk and inconsolable. He held her close in his arms that night, humming the lullaby his mother used to sing to him in her ear until her trembling body stilled and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He did not dare press why she came the next morning, not after she uttered the names of the king and queen and twisted her face in an angry scowl, eyes brimming with resentment, her tears coming again like a raging river, drowning her in despair.

Thoughts of what may have occurred between her, the king and queen that night have plagued his mind since. Today especially, for not more than an hour earlier he saw her and Liam behind the stables, away from prying eyes, kissing fervently. Whatever rotten thing it was that caused her to come running so readily into his waiting arms, it appeared Liam was forgiven, and all as was it should be again.

But it isn't.

Drake breathes in the comforting scent of baled hay upon entering the stalls, finding a hint of relief from his soured mood. He has only the fondest memories of this place, learning his father’s trade and how to tame a mare or stallion as a young boy. If he closes his eyes he can still hear his father’s voice clear as day. Horses are spirits of the wind, Drake. Respect them, or they will not respect you. Heed their calls and you can tame even the wildest stallion. It was Drake’s honor to accept the job as head of the royal stables after the untimely death of his father in a royal hunting accident, as all Jackson Walker ever wanted was for his beloved son to follow in his footsteps.

The memories of his father stir something in him, and Drake sighs heavily as he prepares the saddles, unable to keep his worries from weighing on him even in his happy place. If my father could see the mess I’ve made, he thinks, frowning.

A stunning silver Arabian called Ash gently nudges the side of his face. She is his favourite horse, long since retired having been at the stables since Drake was a boy. Ash nickers at him, and stomps her hooves at the apple bucket at his feet. “Here you go old girl,” he chuckles, offering her a Cordonian Ruby. “We’ve seen a lot together, haven’t we Ash? First, mother left. Now Savannah is gone, and Sophia is slipping through my fingers. You’re about the only girl I’ve got left,” he laughs mirthlessly, resting his head against her. “I have loved that girl for six long years, and still I don’t have the strength to tell her, even in spite of all that’s happened.”

The horse whinnies at him, frightened by the sound of a stranger clearing their throat. Startled, he looks up and sees Maxwell Beaumont standing in the archway, awkwardly shifting his feet.

“Lord Maxwell… can I help you?”

Maxwell looks terrified, like he wants to be swallowed up by the ground beneath him. There is a faint sheen of sweat on his brow, and he won’t stop fiddling with his gloves.

“My lord,” Drake repeats stiffly, trying to suppress his irritation. “What can I do for you?”

“Uh... well… you see, Drake… I can call you Drake, right?”

“What else would you call me?” He snorts, then presses his lips together in a thin line to keep him from saying more. It would not do well for him to be rude to a gentleman of House Beaumont, even if Maxwell is practically the court jester.

“I don’t mean to impose upon your work, Drake. It’s just… I have had something on mind these past few months that I feel I must get off my chest.”

“My lord, if there is an issue with your horse you needn’t come all the way down to the stables yourself to correct it. A simple messenger would have sufficed,” Drake cannot help but roll his eyes. He just wants Maxwell gone from his sight so he can continue his work. He has never had much patience for Maxwell Beaumont’s nonsense antics; not when they were children who played together before circumstance drew a proverbial line in the sand, and certainly not now.

“Oh! No, it’s not about Lucky. He’s a wonderful horse. My compliments to you for your care of him. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve called him Lucky. I know it’s not his given name but --”

“Maxwell!” Drake starts, his tone dangerously sharp. “What the hell do you want?”

Maxwell’s eyes pop out at Drake’s loutish address. He is hardly equipped to broach such a sensitive subject with a man so intimidating. But he must. For Savannah. “It’s about your sister.” Maxwell swallows hard, gathering his courage. He makes eye contact with Drake, who stares at him resolutely with a clenched jaw, now towering over him with his ample chest puffed out. Max’s instinct is to cower, but he thinks of the pretty, wounded girl with dove grey eyes, and presses on. “I understand she fled from the palace, and I was just… I was hoping… do you know anything about where she’s gone?”

“With all due respect, that is a private matter,” Drake growls.

“Please, I don’t mean offend you or to impose on matters that are none of my business, but I must ask. If you know something, anything, maybe I could help bring her home,” Maxwell’s voice wavers, thick with emotion.

“It’s none of your goddamn business, Beaumont, but Savannah isn’t coming home. Wherever she is, she ran off a thief,” Drake’s eyes have darkened to an ink black, and his breathing is shallow. “If that’s all, my lord,” he spits, “I politely ask that you leave at once before I do something we’ll both regret.”

Maxwell feels a lump rising in his throat -- a thief? Savannah Walker is no thief, of that he is sure. He wants to give Drake a piece of his mind for believing the accusations made against his own sister, but sees Drake balling his fists, ready to strike. He hangs his head, defeated, knowing it’s time to retreat. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Good day, Drake.”

Drake curses under his breath while Maxwell scurries out of the stalls. “Goddamn nosy nobles,” he mutters. Ash nuzzles her wet nose into his shoulder, just as she used to do to Savannah and his eyes soften. “I miss her too old girl,” he whispers, fending off the sting of tears. He has not yet cried for her, and he will not. If he does, he fears he may never recover from the crushing reality: that his own sister has abandoned him without a word, just like her mother before her.

•••

Sophia’s hand lingers low on her rumbling belly as she stands unshielded in the sweltering sun with the other maids, waiting for the queen to finish her address so the Royal Horse Guard can lead the parade. She tunes out Madeline’s commentary on the importance of the Apple Jubilee, distracted by the sweet aroma of apple cake wafting through the air that’s driving her mad. Her appetite has been voracious as of late, and nothing seems to slake her unending desire for apples.

The queen drawls on, and Sophia’s eyes wander across the lawn to the men of the Royal Horse Guard guiding their steeds to formation. A wistful smile forms on her lips watching them. They remind her of Savannah, standing in this very spot on a warm May Day a year past, dreamily whispering to Sophia how she wished a fine gentleman, dashing in his red coat, would whisk her away and make her his lady. What became of my sister? she wonders, That innocent, gentle soul, too pure for this world.

She is brought back by the sound of the trumpet call, signalling the outset of the parade. Her gaze follows a chubby Maxwell Beaumont, looking out of place in his spot among the regal men of the Royal Horse Guard. His horse is clearly restive as the parade begins, and the other maids giggle as he desperately tries to control the gaits.

It all happens very quickly -- Maxwell fails miserably at keeping his horse in formation. The panicked steed takes off running through the tents, but not before bucking Maxwell off its back and into the queen’s dessert display (her pride and joy each Jubilee) with a harsh thud heard across the lawns.

There is mayhem in every direction, Lord Rashad yelling to his men, noble ladies shrieking under the collapsed tents, servants rushing to their aid. Madeline stands next to her celebrated dessert display, now completely destroyed, shooting daggers at a beet red Maxwell who is covered head to toe in apple cake.

In the ensuing chaos, Sophia drifts to the sidelines, mistakenly placing herself in the direct path of a spooked horse galloping toward her at warp speed. She panics, but there is nowhere to run, so she closes her eyes tightly and braces for impact. She intakes a sharp breath, anticipating the collision but instead feels a quick tug on her arm and the whoosh of the horse barreling past. She loses her balance and stumbles off the edge of the lawn into the apple orchard with her rescuer, toppling together onto the ground.

“Are you alright?” Sophia opens her eyes to find Drake under her, rubbing his head from hitting it off the base of an apple tree.

“I’m not the one who almost got run over by a rogue horse,” he laughs, “It’s lucky I was here to rescue you, James.”

“My knight in shining armor,” she jests, helping him to his feet.

Their hands remain laced after he’s been pulled from the ground, words unspoken shared in his lingering gaze. Sophia’s heart is thundering in her chest; her feet unsteady beneath her despite being firmly rooted in the grass. The amorous look in his eyes is making her knees tremble.

“Drake,” she whispers, feeling his fingers slip from hers. He opens his mouth, about to say something, then shuts it with an exhale, stepping back to put distance between them.

“There’s something I want to show you. Could you get away for an hour or two? I doubt they would miss you with all the madness happening.”

“I’m not sure I should...” She tilts her chin upward and sees the same doleful, wounded look Savannah wore the last few days before disappearing without a trace. Her resolve crumbles, “...Just an hour?”

Drake’s expression turns instantly, the corners of his mouth lifting into a big, goofy grin. His infectious smile is brighter than the blazing sun, and she can’t help but smile back, knowing he seldom lets his guard down enough for anyone to see him this way.

•••

The river is still, like smooth glass reflecting the bright blue of the sky above, sparkling radiant as a diamond in the midday sun. Yet Drake barely notices the striking view, for he is captivated by her beauty. Sophia skips just ahead of him, softly humming along with the song of the larks trilling in the trees, her gentle, dulcet voice relaxing him. I love you, he longs to say, but will not allow himself the pleasure of sharing the three words that burn on the tip of his tongue. He cannot risk it, lest she flit away once more into the arms of the king -- for the only fate worse than loving her, is losing her.

“So serious,” she playfully swats his arm, imitating him. “Let’s bring back that elusive smile, shall we?”

“For you, anything,” he promises, his smile returning. Her cheeks pink. “We’re here.”

She beams when she sees them, entranced by their ethereal beauty. There, in the clearing, a bevy of white swans and their cygnets float like soft clouds on the water. “Drake, they’re beautiful. It’s like being in a dream.”

She is his dream. He is pulled to her, the way pieces of magnetite naturally draw together. There is constant static in the air when she is near, and when she brushes him with her delicate hands, the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention, a steady current coursing through his veins.

They walk in silence toward the willows along the bog where the swans nest each spring. His mother brought him here as a child, many moons ago, in a happier time long since past. Without a word, he encases her small hand in his, guiding her to kneel in the tall grass at the edge of the nesting marsh when he hears a low hiss, almost like a cry. Sophia gasps and scrambles back into Drake in fright, away from the menacing black cob craning its her neck to her, fiercely whipping its great wings. In the reeds, there is a nest of cracked eggs sitting just above the decaying carcass of a white swan in the muddy waters below.

“He’s grieving,” she says solemnly, “for his soul mate, and his hatchlings. Swans mate for life, you know. He’ll never love another.”

“No, he won’t,” he replies, clutching her back to his chest. He does not mean the swan.

“Do you believe in soul mates?” she asks, laying herself down in the grass away from the water's edge. “I was so sure I had found mine in Liam, until…” Sophia stops herself, her lower lip wobbling. Drake lays next to her, brushing away the stray tears falling from her eyes with his thumb.

“My mother believed in them. When I was six, just before Savannah was born she brought me here to see the newborn cygnets. She wanted me to understand what it meant to have a sister. Her and my father were written in the stars, she’d said, soul mates destined to find each other like swans do, meant to bring Sav and I into the world. When my father died she was never the same, like a piece of her died with him. She wasted away without him.”

Sophia places her palm over his beating heart. “You were lucky to have had them. I have never known love like that.” There is pain in her amber eyes, deep unsettling pain, rooted in the very core of her being. “I don’t know what become of my mother or father. When I was a girl I would make up stories about how they died,” she scoffs, pitifully, “It was a better fate than believing they abandoned me as just a babe. I was deliriously happy when Kane took me from the orphanage, until I grew older and understood what for. The whorehouse is no place for children.”

Drake is stricken by her harrowing tale, suddenly understanding what he saw in her eyes when they first met. “Sophia, I --” but she silences him with her finger over his lips.

“You don’t have to say a word. I’m not lonely anymore, Drake. I have a family now. You’re my family.”

His heart swells, and then, before he can consider consequence, his warm mouth is on hers, tasting her, caressing her tongue with his tongue. She parts her lips willingly for him, and time stops -- the world slowly dissolving around them as he loses himself in her embrace, all his secrets laid bare with one kiss. He wraps his hands through her golden hair and deepens the kiss, wanting to hold on to this moment. Sophia moans softly against him, and he is drunk on the sound, electrified by her. She is his soul mate.

When they part, their breathing is shallow, her eyes still shut as Drake brushes his lips across her jaw, her neck, her collarbone, wanting, needing, to feel all of her. He runs his calloused hands over her pert breasts, her nipples forming stiff peaks under her dress as he pushes his thumbs over them. She lets out a strangled, harsh sound somewhere between a moan and a wail.

“Stop. You have to stop.”

“Oh gods, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sophia. I didn’t mean… please don’t cry,” his heart breaks feeling her recoil from him.

“No! It’s not that. I want to, my god I want to. It’s just…” she wraps her arms tightly around her stomach.

“Liam. It’s Liam,” he whispers, accepting his worst fears being realized. This is the consequence.

“I have to go. I’m sorry, Drake. I’m so, incredibly sorry.”

•••

"See, Lucky? Just a leaf," Maxwell soothes the spooked gelding. He has been ordered out to put Lucky through his paces: galloping up and down steep embankments, going to the slaughterhouse yard, and to desensitize him to dangers, whether real or imagined. A horse’s mind is a funny thing. A falling leaf can terrify an untrained horse, or a balloon popping, or the laughter of children.

Laughter. Carefree and excited. Maxwell hears the giggling of children at play, and leans over the side of the bridge to watch them, three boys with fishing poles and a dark haired little girl, pretending to stir a pot over a pile of rocks. A swan drifts on the pool, black plumed, apple blossoms eddying down the current, surrounding it for a moment, then drifting on. And then, he hears it. A strange song, like a mermaid lured from the deep, without human words, a haunting lullaby.

Casually, he dismounts, and strolls down the causeway, hands thrust deep into his pockets. The children turn as one, looking upon him in mingled anxiety and horror, and they throw themselves head first onto the grass, fishing poles forgotten in their terror.

The leader of the little band, Maxwell would guess, raises his head, and gasps out, "Please, sir! We didna know!" he turns and looks at the others, who bob their heads. The little girl has begun to cry, silently, and Maxwell tosses off his imposing hat, bowing to their leader.

"Well met, young sir!" he says in the common tongue, and they sit up, studying him thoughtfully and not without a little trepidation.

Their leader rises, he is a sturdy child of about nine, dark haired and olive skinned. He could be the natural son of any noble lord... But Maxwell pushes that thought away. The boy bows in return, and his companions huddle together, heads bent in the shadow of the willows that line the riverbank. "Sir!" he salutes a small burnished hand, and clicks his heels together. "Yes, we were fishing in the King's river, sir! Please don't let the queen cut off our hands."

The little girl lets out a moan, clutching her rag doll to her chest, and is silenced with a glare from the boy. The other two boys dash to the river's edge, grab their fishing poles and run into the thicket, without a look behind. The little girl goes on shaking, like a leaf in the wind, clutching her dolly and holding her head in fright.

Maxwell kneels in the long grass beside the little girl, raising her hand in a courtly gesture and kissing it soundly. "Never, mademoiselle. Now, tell me, what's all this about? Are you poaching your dinner, or...?"

The boy crosses his arms. "There's a magic fish in the pool, in't there?"

"A magic fish?"

"Granny says 'twill grant three wishes. One fer me, one fer her, an' one fer all Cordonia."

What do common children dream of? In this instant, he would not be able to say, and what does he know, beyond his own world, of the dreams of children? Only of a glittering white palace, half in shadow, beside the wine dark sea. "And what did you wish for, lad?"

The boy swallows, and he gestures Maxwell closer. "Found it, didna she?" he points.

Maxwell kneels in the muck beside the shimmering waters, scanning the shallows where the boy points with a trembling finger. And he sees, as though in a dream, the body of a white swan floating under the water, half turned to bone. Beneath the swan's great wing, something glitters in the silt. Maxwell plunges his hands in, near up to his elbows, fingers scrabbling for purchase in the slimy reeds.

The boy's terrified shout is his only warning. A dark shape rises above him, wings spread, blocking out the sun. He grabs the glittering box and scrambles back, pulling the child roughly away from the shore. The swan arches its neck menacingly, and swirls around the corpse. It does not make a sound.

Maxwell stares at the box in his hands. It is gold, inlaid with pearls, jet, and carnelian. The clasp has broken. He opens it up, revealing a ballerina, a dual figure: black swan on one side, white swan on the other. The mechanism is thick with rust, and yet, when he winds it up, a discordant melody begins to play. At once, Maxwell knows what this is, knows beyond the shadow of a doubt. She stole the queen's jeweled music box… His heart is thundering, and he has to take a moment, to close his burning eyes. Savannah. The river...

The river flows calmly on, tranquil as the summer sky.

A deep shudder runs through him, and he picks the box up, tucking it under one arm. He doesn't trust himself to speak, and instead reaches into his pocket, drawing out a handful of gold and silver coins, showering the riverbank. The children scrabble in the muck for the coin, and let him pass on by, head bowed; like a man headed to the gallows, his heavy heart pulling him into the depths of an old sorrow; where he too will sink beneath the eddies of the pool, and drift like a dream in the current, all the way to the sunless sea.

•••

"Cygnus is bright tonight," Rashad says thoughtfully, his hands laced behind his back. Maxwell has been invited to Rashad's office for cigars and brandy. He knows what that means. After his embarrassing display at the Apple Jubilee, he had been sure his junior officer commission would be stripped from him, and that he would be turned from the Royal Horse Guard in shame. But perhaps Bertrand's influence greased more than one palm, for as of this morning, he is still as entrenched as ever.

For now.

Rashad looks at Maxwell questioningly, holding out the box of cigars, and he realizes he's been tapping the arms of the chair to a ragtime beat in his nervousness. "Help yourself, Lord Maxwell."

Maxwell takes a cigar, but turns it over and over in his palm as though he does not quite know what to do with it. He is surprised when Lord Rashad hands him a glass of brandy and a wooden match. Maxwell strikes the match on his boot, as he has seen the senior officers do, and they both puff in silence for a long stretch of time.

He is damnably nervous now, and yearns to go for a walk to clear his head. A long walk, he could take out the music box... But he pushes that thought away. He nearly drops the cool glass of brandy when Rashad speaks.

"I was a young man too once, Lord Maxwell." Rashad has returned to his place at the window, staring out at the guttering stars in the falling night.

Maxwell smothers a grin at that, Rashad cannot be more than six or seven years his senior. "Oh?"

"Indeed. I had more ambition than I knew what to do with, and a thirst for anything with a prettily turned ankle." Or anyone, perhaps. "Lord Maxwell," Rashad says, turning suddenly. His dark eyes burn in his shadowed face for a moment, and Maxwell shifts uncomfortably in his chair, taken aback. "The Royal Horse Guard is the backbone of the Imperial Cavalry, and as such, it is a storied appointment. It is not for the dilettante, nor the fool."

Maxwell squirms. The fool. All he has ever been, and all he will ever be. "I --"

"Hush. I am not yet done." Rashad tents his fingers. "Perhaps I was rash in allowing you to buy a commission. But I thought to myself, here is a second son, burning with the ambition to make something of his life. He wants to impress his brother... Or a woman. Was I wrong?"

Maxwell can't seem to stop jiggling his foot. He wonders where this is going. A pretty girl. Gone to him now, lost forever in the night, without even a trail of shining pebbles to mark her path out of the wilderness. "Um..."

"Mmm," Rashad swirls his brandy in the glass. "Perhaps you need to become a man before you can impress a woman." The tone of his voice verges just on the edge of mocking, and Maxwell feels distinctly uncomfortable with the implication in his tone. This isn't the gentlemanly chat he'd envisioned (to be fair, he'd envisioned being thrown out of the Royal Horse Guard in shame, and that hasn't happened yet, but he doesn't for one moment imagine he's in the clear).

Our world rests on a fine interlocking web of favors granted and earned, Maxwell, he can hear Bertrand instruct in his head. It is perhaps too complicated for your dim intellect, but remember this: when a man owes you something, you own his soul. "Lord Rashad," Maxwell clears his throat, but he is struck by indecision, not knowing if it is a wanted thing. He thinks, running his finger along the glass. Rashad is eyeing him expectantly. "With all the recent... you know... I haven't had the time to, well..."

"Out with it, man!" Rashad's eyes glint with vicious mirth. "Slake your lust on a farmer's daughter? I assure you, they're more than willing when it comes to a man in the Guard's colors!"

Maxwell thinks suddenly of the little boy by the river, dark haired, with skin like a bronze coin. "No, this is about the Ball. I would ask for your assistance." A man who owes another has sold his soul. And, what of it? Rashad is ambitious, he has all but admitted it in so many words. And Maxwell needs the help.

"Well, then... I accept." Rashad rubs his hands together. "A gentleman's bargain, very shrewd. I will put in my recommendation for you to commence officer training in Krona, starting in June. Ensign, I think, will suit."

"In Krona? Officer training?" Maxwell's head is spinning, stunned by the currents that are swirling around him.

"Don't ask too many questions, Lord Maxwell. Some things are better left unsaid." Rashad fixes Maxwell with a stern look. "Do you understand?"

Maxwell gulps. He thinks of the box in his saddle bag, golden and gleaming, of the watery music of the lake, of the lone swan, drifting hauntingly upon the water beside its dead mate, black plumed and mute forever more. He nods, not trusting himself to speak.

Thoughts of the revels to come spiral through Maxwell's head, and he stands to go. The floor is spinning. He picks up the saddlebags -- they did not seem half so heavy when he came in -- and falls down in an ungainly heap, unused to so much brandy in such a short time.

Rashad does not move, until suddenly he is on his feet, his face drawn and pale, unrecognizable. "What is that?" he asks in a hoarse whisper, pointing.

The music box has rolled from the saddlebags and is sitting inconspicuously on the floor. Maxwell picks it up, gently, intending to put it away. "It's broken," he says. He winds it up, and the music begins to play, discordant strains filling the tiny room.

Rashad lunges forward and snaps it shut. "Where did you get this?!" he demands in a choked rasp.

"I found it in the river," Maxwell gulps. Rashad's face slowly regains color, turning from gray to a dull, furious red.

"I will take that," he says stiffly. "You may go."

"But --" Maxwell thinks of Savannah, but something in Rashad's face stays his protests, and he is outside, gulping down the sweet night air in record time. From within the office, he hears the sound of the music box, and then the sound of glass breaking, and as he spurs Sir Lucky towards the barracks, he chances to look up towards the inky sky, where Cygnus shines bright and the sad strains of the music follow him as he rides on, into the night.

#historical au #the royal romance #choices the royal romance #choices fanfiction #choices trr #trr #liam x mc #king liam #drake x mc #drake walker #maxwell beaumont #a world apart #long post

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anothergracekellyblog · 7 years ago

Photo

TIME magazine - January 31, 1955 Cover illustration by Boris Chaliapin

THE GIRL IN WHITE GLOVES

Almost every morning, a slim figure in a polo coat, leading a small black poodle on a leash, emerges from one of Manhattan's cliff houses on East 66th Street. The doorman gives her a cheery “Good Morning, Miss Kelly.” But outside, no head turns. For, in her low-heeled shoes and horn-rimmed spectacles, Actress Grace Kelly is all but indistinguishable from any other well-scrubbed young woman of the station-wagon set, armored in good manners, a cool expression, and the secure knowledge that whatever happens, Daddy can pay.

A few blocks away, Grace Kelly's name is emblazoned on two first-run Broadway houses, and the same face, without spectacles, makes husbands sigh and wives think enviously that they might look that way too, if only they could afford a really good hairdo. In Hollywood, producers fight over her, directors beg for her, writers compose special scripts for her. In an industry where the girls can be roughly divided into young beauties and aging actresses, Grace Kelly is something special: a young (25) beauty who can act.

A year ago, Grace Patricia Kelly was only a promising newcomer (generally thought to be English), who lost Clark Gable to Ava Gardner in Mogambo. Currently, she is the acknowledged “hottest property” in Hollywood. In Manhattan this year, the New York Film Critics pronounced her acting in The Country Girl “the outstanding performance of 1954.”

CAN’T TOUCH HER

Grace Kelly, with the lovely blonde hair, chiseled features, blue eyes and an accent that is obviously refined, is a startling change from the run of smoky film sirens and bumptious cuties. Said one Hollywood observer: “Most of these dames just suggest Kinsey statistics. But if a guy in a movie theater starts mooning about Grace, there could be nothing squalid about it; his wife would have to be made to understand that it was something fine - and bigger than all of them. Her peculiar talent, you might say, is that she inspires licit passion."

From the day in 1951 when she walked into Director Fred Zinnemann's office wearing prim white gloves ("Nobody came to see me before wearing white gloves"), the well-bred Miss Grace Kelly of Philadelphia has baffled Hollywood. She is a rich girl who has struck it rich. She was not discovered behind a soda fountain or at a drive-in. She is a star who was never a starlet, who never worked up from B pictures, never posed for cheesecake, was never elected, with a press agent's help, Miss Antiaircraft Battery C. She did not gush or twitter or desperately pull wires for a chance to get in the movies. Twice she turned down good Hollywood contracts. When she finally signed on the line, she forced mighty M-G-M itself to grant her special terms. Beamed a New York friend: “Here, for the first time in history, is a babe that Hollywood can't get to. Can't touch her with money, can't touch her with big names. Only thing they can offer her is good parts.”

STEEL INSIDES

She has managed to get the parts. In the short space of 18 months, she has been paired with six of Hollywood's biggest box office male stars - Clark Gable, Ray Milland, James Stewart, William Holden, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant. These seasoned veterans have learned to view with a jaundiced eye the pretty young newcomers assigned to play opposite them. Grace, as usual, was different. Says Holden, one of Hollywood's ablest pros: “With some actresses, you have to keep snapping them to attention like a puppy. Grace is always concentrating. In fact, she sometimes keeps me on the track.” Says Jimmy Stewart: "She's easy to play to. You can see her thinking the way she's supposed to think in the role. You know she's listening, and not just for cues. Some actresses don't think and don't listen. You can tell they're just counting the words.”

Outside the studio, Grace continued to disregard the Hollywood rules. She was friendly, but she refused to court the important columnists. Interviewers who tried to get her to open up came away swearing that they would rather tackle a train window anytime. One producer grumbled that she had “stainless steel insides.” She flatly refused to divulge even the standard data (bust, waist, hips). One columnist asked routinely whether she wore nightgowns. “I think it's nobody's business what I wear to bed,” she said coolly. “A person has to keep something to herself, or your life is just a layout in a magazine."

In the end, publicists had to content themselves with tagging Miss Kelly as “a Main Line debutante.” She is neither Main Line nor a debutante, but she is the next thing to both.

THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

In Philadelphia, the Kellys are about as conspicuous as the 30th Street Station, which, like many of the city's major structures, bears the credit: Brickwork by Kelly. Handsome, athletic John B. Kelly, Grace's father, the son of a farm boy from County Mayo, began business life as a bricklayer. Eventually, he parlayed a borrowed $7,000 into the nation's biggest brickwork construction company. One of his brothers was George Kelly, Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright (Craig's Wife); another was Walter Kelly, the famed “Virginia Judge” of the vaudeville circuits.

All the Kellys, says a friend, are “beautiful, physical people.” Father Jack was a champion sculler; Grace's mother (who is of German descent) was a model, later the first woman physical education instructor at the University of Pennsylvania. Father Jack, who still takes his athletics seriously, went to England in 1920 to compete at Henley. But the Henley committee ruled that he could not compete because he had once “worked with his hands" and was therefore not a “gentleman.” He went on to the Olympics, where he soundly thrashed the Henley winner, and triumphantly sent his sweaty green rowing cap to King George V of England with his compliments. The moment his son John B. Jr. (“Kell") was born in 1927, Jack resolved that he would win at Henley; he began training the boy personally at the age of seven. In 1947 Kell righted an old wrong done his family by going to Henley in the colors of the University of Pennsylvania and scoring an impressive victory for Penn and Pop.

CHURCH & ATHLETICS

Of the three Kelly daughters, Peggy was the oldest and a cut-up, Lizanne the youngest and an extrovert. Grace, the middle one, born Nov. 12, 1929, was shy, quiet, and for years snuffled with a chronic cold. The big, 15-room house in plain East Falls, across the Schuylkill River from the Main Line, was the meeting place for the whole neighborhood. “There was a lawn out back with swings and a sandbox, a tennis court and the usual things like that,” says Grace. Summers, the Kelly family had a house on the Jersey shore at Ocean City. As regularly as she marched the children to St. Bridget's Roman Catholic Church every Sunday, Mrs. Kelly marched them off to the Penn Athletic Club for workouts. "There's a certain discipline in athletic work,” says Mrs. Kelly. “That's why Grace can accustom herself to routine and responsibility.” Sister Peg organized home theatricals. "Somebody else always got the lead,” Grace recalls, without rancor. Even then remote and self-absorbed, Grace used to write poetry, some serious, some "little gooney ones” that showed a neat turn of phrase. Sample, written when she was 14:

I hate to see the sun go down And squeeze itself into the ground, Since some warm night it might get stuck And in the morning not get up.

Little Grace went to the local Ravenhill convent school, then to Stevens School in Germantown. By the time she was eleven, she was appearing in a local amateur dramatic company. Turned down by Bennington (she flunked math), Grace got herself into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. From the first, her family was dubious about an acting career. “We'd hoped she would give it up,” says her mother. Snorts Father Kelly: “Those movie people lead pretty shallow lives.”

THE “CLEAN” WAY

But Grace knew what she wanted. To assure her independence, she got a job modeling, was soon making $400 a week posing for Ipana, beer ads, Old Golds. Photographer Ruzzie Green describes her as “what we call ‘nice clean stuff’ in our business. She's not a top model and never will be. She's the girl next door. No glamour, no oomph, no cheesecake. She has lovely shoulders but no chest. Grace is like Bergman in the 'clean’ way. She can do that smush stuff in movies - remember all those little kisses in Rear Window? - and get away with it.” A friend remembers her at this period as “terribly sedate, always wore tweed suits and a hat-with-a-veil kind of thing. She had any number of sensible shoes, even some with those awful flaps on front.”

She did TV commercials (“I was terrible - honestly, anyone watching me give the pitch for Old Golds would have switched to Camels"), doggedly made the rounds of summer stock (New Hope and Denver) and casting offices. “I've read for almost everything that's been cast. I even read for the ingenue part in The Country Girl on Broadway (left out in the movie ). The producer told me I really wasn't the ingenue type, that I was too intelligent looking.”

Then she read for the daughter's part in Strindberg's grim The Father. She got the part and won good notices, but the play lasted only two months. Grace went back to TV (“summer stock in an iron lung") to play in such varied offerings as Studio One, Treasury Men in Action, Philco Playhouse and Lights Out.

FIRST FAN

Once before and once shortly after she left dramatic school, Grace turned down $250-a-week movie contracts: “I didn't want to be just another starlet.” Now Hollywood reached for her again but failed to get a firm grip. Director Henry Hathaway gave her a bit part as the lady negotiating a divorce across the street from the man on the ledge in Fourteen Hours. But she refused a contract; she did not feel ready yet. She did accept a one-shot offer from Producer Stanley Kramer for the part of Gary Cooper's young wife in High Noon.

Fourteen Hours produced her first fan, a high-school girl in Oregon who started a fan club and kept Grace posted on new members. Grace thought it a hilarious joke. “We've got a new girl in Washington,” she would cry in triumph. “I think she's ours, sewed up.” In High Noon her finishing-school accent sat awkwardly amongst the western drawls, and her beauty made little impact. What was more, from High Noon determined Grace Kelly got her first real self-doubts about her planned progress. Says she: “With Gary Cooper, everything is so clear. You look into his face and see everything he is thinking. I looked into my own face and saw nothing. I knew what I was thinking, but it didn't show. For the first time, I suddenly thought, ‘Perhaps I'm not going to be a great star, perhaps I'm not any good after all.’” Grace hustled back to New York to learn how to make it show.

THE “TOO” CATEGORY

She was still learning (with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse) when 20th Century-Fox called her to test for a role in a film called Taxi. Dressed in an old skirt and a man's shirt on her way to class, “I walked into Gregory Ratoff's office, and he threw up his arms and screamed, 'She's perfect.' In all my life, no one has ever said, 'You are perfect.' People have been confused about my type, but they agreed on one thing: I was in the “too” category - too tall, too leggy, too chinny. And Ratoff kept yelling around, 'What I love about this girl, she's not pretty.’” But the producer did not like her, and another girl got the role.

Director John Ford saw the test, however, and wanted her for Mogambo. Even then, Grace did not come running. When M-G-M offered her a seven-year contract starting at $750 a week, she demanded a year off every two years for a play, and permission to go back to New York, instead of hanging around Hollywood, whenever she finished a picture. She was only 22, and all but unknown. But M-G-M agreed to her terms. Says Grace: “I wanted Mogambo for three things: John Ford, Clark Gable, and a free trip to Africa.”

In Africa, Grace picked up a lot of film technique from Ford and developed a hero worship for Gable. Ford was soon predicting that she would be a star. For her performance as the cool English wife stirred to sudden and thwarted passion for White Hunter Gable, Grace won a “best supporting role” nomination for the Academy Award.

RESTRAINT & CONTROL

M-G-M still seemed uncertain about what to do with her. But Alfred Hitchcock, also impressed by the Taxi test, snapped her up for Dial M for Murder, then for Rear Window. Says Hitchcock: “From the Taxi test, you could see Grace's potential for restraint. I always tell actors don't use the face for nothing. Don't start scribbling over the sheet of paper until we have something to write. We may need it later. Grace has this control. It's a rare thing for a girl at such an age.” Director George Seaton adds: “Grace doesn't throw everything at you in the first five seconds. Some girls give you everything they've got at once, and there it is - there is no more. But Grace is like a kaleidoscope: one twist, and you get a whole new facet.”

Under Hitchcock's expert direction, Grace bloomed in Rear Window. As a sleek young career girl, she distilled a tingling essence of what Hitchcock has called “sexual elegance.” She was learning her trade. The way she walked, spoke and combed her hair had a sureness that gives moviegoers a comfortable feeling: she would never make them wince with some awkwardness of misplaced gaucherie. Exhibitors, who know a good thing when they see the turnstiles click, began dropping Hitchcock and Stewart from their marquees and advertised simply: “Grace Kelly in Rear Window.” In Hollywood, the stampede was on.

MORE THAN BEAUTIFUL

When the stampede started, Grace was in a bathing suit dutifully splashing around a Japanese bathhouse as Navy Pilot Bill Holden's wife in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (a movie that does little for Grace except establish the fact that she has a better figure than normally meets the eye). At about the same time, Paramount's producer-director team of William Perlberg and George Seaton got word that Jennifer Jones, scheduled to play the title role in their next picture, The Country Girl, had become pregnant. They asked M-G-M to lend them Grace. This time M-G-M said no. Grace still gets angry when she thinks about it. She went to her agent, says Perlberg, and told him: “If I can't do this picture, I'll get on the train and never come back. I'll quit the picture business. I'll never make another film.” Actress Kelly had her way. M-G-M lent her out to Paramount again, but this time jumped the price from the $20,000 charged for Toko-Ri to $50,000 and demanded that she give M-G-M an extra picture (her contract calls for only three a year).

The Country Girl was final proof that she is more than merely beautiful. The well-bred girl from Philadelphia is completely convincing as the slatternly, embittered wife of aging, alcoholic Matinee Idol Bing Crosby. She slouches around with her glowing hair gone dull, her glasses stuck on top of her head, her underlip sullen, resentment in the very sag of her shoulders and the dangle of her arms. She looks dreadful. Said Seaton: “You know that old cardigan sweater she wears? Well, a lot of actresses would say, 'Well, why don't we just put a few rhinestones here? I want to look dowdy, of course, but this woman has taste... and before you know it, she'd look like a million dollars. But not Grace. Grace wanted to be authentic.”

Bing Crosby, a little nervous himself at undertaking so exacting a dramatic role, was dubious about his untried costar and said so. But before the shooting was over, Crosby was telling Seaton, “Never let me open my big mouth again,” and talking of taking Grace out dancing.

BAGS PACKED

Hollywood is now eager to adopt Actress Kelly, white gloves and all, and is trying hard, with the air of an ill-at-ease lumberjack worrying whether he is using the right spoon. But Grace shows no interest in the Hollywood way of life, or even in having the customary swimming pool ("I don't swim that much"). Thus far, she has lived with a sister or a girlfriend in a furnished, two-room North Hollywood apartment, acting as if she considered herself on location, with her bags packed ready to go back to New York.

Young men who are eager to brighten her after-hours life come away baffled. “If she doesn't think a joke is funny," one complained, “she doesn't laugh." Wolves are discouraged when Grace briskly pulls on her glasses (her lovely blue eyes are nearsighted) and assumes her Philadelphia expression. Some suspect that she is, as Oscar Wilde put it, “a sphinx without secrets." Publicity men despair of her. “A Grace Kelly anecdote?” said a friend. “I don't think Grace would allow an anecdote to happen to her.”

A few of Hollywood's older, more sought-after men have concluded, from time to time, that they were just the boys destined to discover and unlock the real Grace. Each time, Grace has resisted unlocking, though whenever her father reads in a column of a new “romantic attachment,” the family gets alarmed. “I don't like that sort of thing much," snorts father Kelly. “I'd like to see Grace married. These people in Hollywood think marriage is like a game of musical chairs." When the gossips reported that Ray Milland was leaving his wife for Grace, mother Kelly hustled out to California to set things straight. Milland insists that he only took her to dinner once; Grace says nothing. Most recently Grace's escort has been Dress Designer Oleg Cassini, onetime husband of Gene Tierney and professional man-about-ladies. The Kellys deplore all such gossip-column romances. "I don't generally approve of these oddballs she goes out with,” grumps brother Kell, who is still national sculling champion and works for his father's company between workouts on the Schuylkill. “I wish she would go out with the more athletic type. But she doesn't listen to me anymore.”

Some of Grace's admirers fear that M-G-M may do to her what the studio did to Deborah Kerr - lash her down to "lady" roles and keep her there. Even after The Country Girl, the best M-G-M could think of was to assign Grace to Green Fire (which she did as her part of the bargain on Country Girl) and then offer her Quentin Durward. Grace, who sees the satin-lined trap as clearly as anyone, refused the Durward part after reading the script. “All the men can duel and fight, but all I'd do would be to wear 35 different costumes, look pretty and frightened. There are eight people chasing me: the old man, robbers, the head gypsy and Durward. The stage directions on every page of the script say, 'She clutches her jewel box and flees.’ I just thought I'd be so bored..."

RELUCTANT SCENERY

While waiting for M-G-M to think again, Grace retired to her three-room apartment in a huge, modern building in Manhattan (masonry by Kelly), where she lives alone with her poodle puppy, Oliver. Her amusements range from photography (she develops her own negatives, sloshing around her bathroom in the dark) to word games. A favorite game is one devised by Alfred Hitchcock when he met Lizabeth Scott and got to wondering what would happen if other people dropped the first letter of their names: Rank Sinatra, Scar Hammerstein, Reer Garson, Orgie Raft, Ickey Rooney. Four times a week she puts her hair up into a ponytail, dons a leotard, and goes off to classes in modern dancing and ballet. Wandering near Broadway, she avoided the Broadway theater where M-G-M publicized Green Fire with a huge poster of a bosomy girl in sexy green drapery with Grace's head but another girl's body. “It makes me so mad,” says Grace. “And the dress isn't even in the picture.”

Last week M-G-M's Production Boss Dore Schary summoned Grace to Hollywood to propose a new picture - a western with Spencer Tracy scheduled to costar. After two days of talk, Grace was still noncommittal; she would wait, she said coolly, until she had seen the completed script.

It is possible that Grace might yet win an Oscar for her Country Girl performance, and even M-G-M would have a hard time turning an Oscar-winning actress into a road-company Greer Garson. Furthermore, Actress Kelly is determined that that will not happen to her. Says she, setting her beautiful chin: “I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face. If anybody starts using me as scenery, I'll do something about it.” If all else fails, Grace could conceivably break her contract and return to television. Or she could try the stage, where acting talent counts for more, and the competition is tougher. She could always give up the whole thing for the role of wealthy young socialite. But if her studio mentors are wise, and if Grace is as wary as she has so far proved to be, the young beauty from Philadelphia may yet become an authentic jewel in Hollywood's tinsel crown.

#grace kelly #1955 #boris chaliapin #time magazine #vintage #sheila scan #sheila edit

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